Together, the University of Austin and Bitcoin financial services company Unchained have created a long-term endowment fund containing Bitcoin.

Innovative Endowment Fund Initiative

Unchained, a crypto services and custody business based in Austin, Texas, announced on May 31 that it has partnered with the University of Austin (UATX).

With the aim of accumulating $5 million, the two are starting the first long-term endowment fund housed in Bitcoin, which will be kept invested in BTC for at least five years.

This project seeks to investigate alternative financial methods and include Bitcoin in postgraduate education.

“By including bitcoin in its endowment, UATX is setting a precedent for other academic institutions to explore alternative and maybe more resilient financial models,” the statement said.

Starting the fund with a personal contribution of 2 BTC, valued at around $137,000 at current rates, Joseph Kelly, CEO of Unchained,

Kelly wrote in a May 31 post on X, “The world needs more great founders, and we are excited to bring together our communities to build something new.”

Additionally, offering a joint custody vault to safely retain the endowment funds will be unchained.

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Through events, guest lectures, and discussions aimed at informing the public about the advantages of Bitcoin and its ability to transform finance and education, the project intends to promote community involvement via cooperative marketing initiatives.

Emphasizing sound money ideas, opposition to censorship, and questioning the established quo, this project matches the basic goals of both Unchained and UATX.

Money or other financial assets contributed to academic institutions make up university endowments, which also serve as self-sustaining sources of support by purposefully not distributing the whole fund balance.

UATX is not the only American university investing in cryptocurrency; other institutions also participate. According to reports in March, BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF has raised the Blyth Fund’s portfolio exposure to 7% BTC.

Ivy League schools, including Harvard, Yale, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have also experimented with crypto investments as early as 2018.