Topic: Emory Becomes First University To Invest In Bitcoin (Read 242 times)

Yeah, I do think that if it ever were to be shady, then they wouldn't be able to put such an amount of money in the shares in the first place  Hopefully, that wouldn't be the last case of such a deed done, even though, as it was pointed out, it isn't owning the BTC they put their money on..

It's funny how people admit and track the money flowing into the market through ETFs and brag that demand for bitcoin is high, but they deny that Emory University is an investor in bitcoin. I really don't understand what's going on with people. If we deny that people investing in bitcoin through ETFs are not bitcoin investors. We should also reject bitcoin ETFs and no money is flowing into the market and the demand for bitcoin is not as high as we are boasting.

So far, Bitcoin ETFs have bought nearly 1 million BTC and this number will soon surpass the amount of bitcoins Satoshi holds, if they are not bitcoin investors, then who are they?

They are open about their investments to the public, meaning everything is transparent and everyone agrees on decisions so it doesn't matter if it's shareholder money or student money. We just need to know that they have invested a large amount of money in bitcoin and they are bitcoin investors.

Regardless of the fact that they do not hold the keys to their own bitcoin, they still one way or another has invested in it. I am pretty sure that they bought bitcoin ETFs because of legalities and complexes that would need to be sort out. They bought the bitcoin under the university's name so who would hold the keys?

Anyway, I am curious where did they take the money from to invest in. Did they get it from shareholders or maybe what the students are paying them? If that is the case, did they announce this to the student body? They represent the whole community of students so it must make sense that the students also appreciate this move.

Well, I'd try to give them some tips and tricks if they find it difficult to own their own Bitcoin. I don't think we should normalize them. Yes, I agree that money is on the table, but that doesn't mean we can't change anything to help people become their own banks. There are too many bank failures in my country, which should show that trusting a third party should not be their first option. The point is that if they buy ETF or something similar we need to make them realize that they don't necessarily own Bitcoin, whether they want to accept that risk or not is their own choice.

Bitcoin investors must identify their own biggest reasons why they move from central and commercial banks to Bitcoin. Why do they pick Bitcoin for their investment portfolios?

To be their own banks.
To control their funds by themselves.
All these are helpful for them to avoid losing funds by any black swan events, compromises on any centralized platform that later fail to compensate hacked fund to their customers.

If they understand it, as either a university, institutional investor or retail investor, they will do see vital practice of using open source non custodial wallets to store and secure their own bitcoins.

If they understand it, they will see spending money to buy shares of Grayscale Mini Trust is not impressive, but stupid and very risky.

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts

"This reportedly becomes the first time a university admits and reports owning BTC, with crypto enthusists thinking this is “impressive” for a university that is five times smaller than Havard."
_{Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/emory-university-owns-15-million-of-grayscale-mini-trust/}

I almost laughed out loud at this phrase (highlighted in the text). I would like to know who these crypto entquiasts were who considered owning a shares in Grayscale Mini "impressive". I am sure that no more or less experienced user on this forum will consider this event "impressive", because this news would have had a positive "response" from the BTC-community only if "The private research university in Atlanta, Georgia" bought bitcoins directly and had it in its own possession, and not in the form of dubious surrogates offered by Grayscale Mini. Or are the professors at this university so uneducated that they don’t know how and where to buy bitcoin, and even more so, how to store it?

Sometimes, if you try to think about how the whole Decentralisation protocol of bitcoin is something that's against what the government wants, it can seem to be a little messy. And that's because if the government literally hates bitcoin why do they seem to hodl it secretly. Seeing this made me think of how the US government literally gave bitcoin a pull back during the period of the HBO drama by Making news of them attempting to move some coins.

Firms like these and universities actually have the opportunity to invest in bitcoin mainly if the government wants them to. The idea is bitcoin is the biggest and top crypto currency in the whole ecosystem. It's no big news that the world is gradually taking a digital turn already meaning bitcoin will become more important as time goes by.

Actually a couple of larger tech institutions are holding or did hold BTC from their own mining and testing from years ago.
Don't know if any of them still hold any but over a decade ago but back then Caltach / Berkeley / MIT and a few others all had some.

Has not been mentioned / discussed a lot but they did used to hold back in the early days.

-Dave

I get what you mean but if we take that harsh stance and discourage loved ones from investing in bitcoin or advise people not to invest in bitcoin if they don't store bitcoin themselves. Do you think more people will invest in bitcoin and will bitcoin become as popular as it is today? I bet if there were no bitcoin ETFs, we wouldn't have as many people interested and invested in bitcoin as we do today.

As you can see, the amount of money flowing into the market through ETFs is huge, and even the amount of bitcoins bought by ETFs exceeds the amount of BTC mined every day. That shows that the demand for bitcoin is huge but most people do not want to invest in it directly but want to invest through ETFs because it makes them feel safer in their mind.
We can't expect everyone to be like us and confident enough to store their own bitcoins. By the way, I don't think buying bitcoin and storing bitcoin will be easier than gold or stocks, this is the bias of bitcoin investors.
Put yourself in the shoes of people who have never invested in bitcoin and don't even have basic knowledge of technology, they even have difficulty using the internet, you will see their answer is completely opposite to yours. And unfortunately, such people still make up the majority of the world's population.

This was expectation of Bitcoin community months before Bitcoin Spot ETF approvals in January 2024. Spot ETFs bring more institutional investors to Bitcoin market and it only is strange if we don't see such move after January 2024.

When biggest barriers for institutional investors are reduced with Bitcoin Spot ETFs, they will have more reasons to invest money in one of best investment assets.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs: Everything you need to know.

I'm not comfortable saying that since it can mislead people to believe they own Bitcoin somehow. I think this is similar to how people invest in gold ETF, nearly all of them don't assume that they can cash that out and bring their gold back home because they don't really buy one. At the very least that's my experience with traditional finance in my area. Not to mention buying Bitcoin is way easier compared to buying stock or gold, etc. I don't know, if somebody likes Bitcoin and understands the principle behind it I don't think not fully owning them is a good idea. Just 2 my cents.

I also think it's a great step but stuffs like this don't tend to move me anymore because all these were bound to happen as time goes because Bitcoin has always found a way to silence it critics. I mean if a whole country can actually divert their finances and put on Bitcoin then definitely other organizations too can do it . And please don't forget the number one rule as an investor especially with Bitcoin as it is clear that if the Bitcoin isn't held by your own key then it definitely not yours.

They indirectly investing in Bitcoin if someone wants to push this as an article related to Bitcoin. I think OP just want to do a clickbait since it's a catchy headline and we always want to see whoever invests in Bitcoin. Whether they're big, small, a government, a bank, etc. and now, with this headline as a university. But, it's disappointing that it's certainly that they aren't really invested in Bitcoin. Anyway, they're a university and they'll choose to invest to something they know more or has an idea of what they're getting in. That's a lot of shares though.

This is so interesting to hear about, that an academic institution of learning is investing in bitcoin, i don't know maybe it was the fact that its being a private university that helped it get to this or because of being a research institution, but whichever way be the reason for them to have made it a decision over bitcoin investment, this shows they have a very big future ahead and this decision will help them along the way to make their goals come to be.

When we invest in bitcoin through Grayscale or another ETF like Blackrock, it means we are investing in bitcoin and we are bitcoin investors but we do not have full control over our bitcoin. So in this case Emory is an investor in bitcoin and they are the first school to invest in bitcoin.


We don't need to be too strict when we say that only people who own bitcoin and have full control over it by storing it in a non-custodial wallet are bitcoin investors, and people who invest in bitcoin through ETFs or store bitcoin using third-party services are not investors. They are all bitcoin investors and all own bitcoins, but the difference is whether they have full control/not full control over their bitcoins.

Was lacking a bit but understandable if you read the whole article.

All these ETFs, including buying and holding Bitcoin, boil down to one thing: trust in Bitcoin. This university investing in Grayscale’s mini trust clearly shows they understand Bitcoin and believe in its future. Whether their plan is short-term or long-term, it’s positive news being the first to invest in Bitcoin.

Holding Bitcoin is a different story, though. But I think it really depends on how we understand it. We shouldn’t get caught up in technicalities; instead, let’s appreciate that they’re investing, which means adoption is already happening.

I thought they actually bought Bitcoin and held it in their wallet, but after reading the quoted sentence they only own shares of an ETF issued by Grayscale. That's not Bitcoin at all - it's just an ETF product - so more accurately they are just a University that invests in ETFs. You should be able to distinguish between ETFs and Bitcoin, even though ETFs represent Bitcoin, they are not Bitcoin. Never confuse ETFs with Bitcoin.

Not your key
Not your coin.
And yes they buy Grayscale shares while Grayscale buys Bitcoin so it's different.

They don't buy from ETF
ETF uses their investments to give an equivalent of their investment
Which is kept in a custodial wallet (Coinbase).
If you buy a share in Tesla doesn't even mean you buying a Tesla product not to mention an ETF.

Okay, both of your perspectives still make sense with different methods of buying and storing. Is there anything wrong with that? Of course not, although the ideal of owning bitcoin is when you withdraw it to a wallet and have full control with your own keys, whereas going through a third party means 50:50 you still have strong rights to claim ownership. There is no debate as long as the third party is bound by the rules and every time you withdraw bitcoin from Grayscale and it works then everything is considered legal.

Yeah, the title as written by the OP is incorrect. Although if we want to look on the bright side there is more and more exposure of institutions to bitcoin through these derivative products, which in turn increase the demand for real bitcoin. For an institution for many reasons it is better to buy Grayscale's, MicroStrategy shares, or ETFs than to buy bitcoin directly.