Commentary

US Universities Join Crypto Push Despite Operation Choke Point

Mark Timmis · 11 August 2025 · 2 min read

tl;dr

Uh-oh, which fool claimed Operation Choke Point is dead in the US? US universities have started their own crypto pivot.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

You can’t argue with that as a very fine start to the week with an intra-day peak of $122,300. New all-time highs are within touching distance with a clear blue sky run-up potential to $150k this week perhaps.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Yesterday, seems so far away

According to CoinTelegraph, I shouldn’t have got quite so excited in yesterday’s CCC about the prospect of the imminent and very welcome demise of Operation Choke Point:

Alex Kananykhin, CEO of Unicoin claims that in 2025:

“We know about it first-hand, as Unicoin and its subsidiaries have been de-banked, without explanations, by several banks.

Those who oppose freedom and liberty, have invented Operation Choke Point 3.0:

https://a16z.com/newsletter/big-bank-fees-could-kill-competition/

Alex Rampell of Andreessen Horowitz writes:

“… now the banks are aiming to implement their own Chokepoint 3.0 — charging insanely high fees to access data or move money to crypto and fintech apps — and, more concerningly, blocking crypto and fintech apps they don’t like.”

One only needs a modicum of decency and respect for our hard-won liberties to know that this is so, so, so wrong.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – BTC adoption

Well, here’s a new source of investment funds that I had not factored into my ridiculous price prediction of $1.2mm per BTC.

The latest filings for 13F show that universities Harvard and Brown have bought spot BTC ETFs to the tune of $116mm and $13mm respectively. Harvard’s investment portfolio totals a whopping $53.2bn at the end of the last quarter, so it is still some way off my 3% - 5% assumption. But like all wise investors, Harvard will DCA into all their investments, so this is just the start. It is a similar situation for Brown, which has an investment portfolio of $7.2bn.

Universities in the US have a total combined investment portfolio of a jaw-dropping near $900bn. As the success of Harvard’s and Brown’s investment in BTC is noticed, then the others will undoubtedly join the party. We will likely see $27bn to $45bn of new money flowing into BTC from this source alone. That won’t happen today, but once the trickle starts, it is destined to become a flood.

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