Leading investment bank Morgan Stanley with some $9.3 trillion in client assets has just launched its first spot Bitcoin ETF – and the firm is not stopping here as it plans a deep foray into digital assets.
The bank’s head of digital-asset strategy told Decrypt in an interview this week.:
“We’re not going to stop at just Bitcoin…It’s really about the longer-term journey, and there’s quite a long way to go.”
As reported by Decrypt, the bank has already filed applications for ETFs tracking Ethereum and Solana, while it is also eyeing a tokenized money-market fund. Bitcoin-based yield and lending services are also being explored.
Morgan Stanley’s expansion into crypto last week also coincided with financial giant Charles Schwab announcing it will offer crypto trading later this quarter through Schwab Crypto. “By enabling crypto trading directly within a familiar brokerage platform, Schwab is reducing friction and expanding access for more capital to flow into both BTC and ETH,” wrote TradingView in a recent article.
Adapt or die
Crypto expansion by traditional finance has seen an aggressive push over the last year, a move almost unthinkable just a few years ago. Institutional adoption – which includes central banks and pension funds – is reshaping the crypto market and pushing this nascent asset class into the mainstream. Moreover, firms like Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley are making it easy for every-day investors to buy crypto through the same systems they already use for stocks and ETFs. This is a significant shift that will funnel tens of billions if not trillions of dollars into the crypto market, just as blockchain infrastructure upends traditional finance and the world’s banking system. Finance is moving on-chain, and TradFi firms will be left with one choice: adapt or die. This past week saw two more adapters.