Wall Street investment banking giant Morgan Stanley is accelerating its cryptocurrency business expansion. It plans to open spot trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana (SOL) on its electronic trading platform E-Trade in the first half of this year, and has now announced the launch of its own digital wallet in the second half of the year.
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management head Jedd Finn told Barron’s, “This actually indicates that the way financial services infrastructure operates is about to change.”
Over time, as the infrastructure develops, we will be better able to integrate traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.
Notably, in the same week the news broke, Morgan Stanley also filed an S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to apply for the issuance of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana spot ETFs.
Looking back to January 2024, when the U.S. officially approved Bitcoin spot ETFs for trading, Morgan Stanley described it as a “paradigm shift in global recognition and usage of digital assets.”
Data also confirms this judgment. Since their launch, the cumulative trading volume of Bitcoin spot ETFs has exceeded $1.6 trillion; currently, the total assets under management (AUM) of 11 Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. amount to approximately $130 billion, with BlackRock’s IBIT becoming the fastest-growing ETF in history.
Later in the second half of 2024, Morgan Stanley opened its wealth management advisors to recommend Bitcoin spot ETFs to some high-net-worth clients; a year later, the bank further expanded access to crypto assets, opening related investments to all client accounts, including retirement accounts.
Morgan Stanley’s aggressive expansion reflects a collective anxiety on Wall Street. It is rumored that JPMorgan Chase is also evaluating whether to offer cryptocurrency spot and derivatives trading services to institutional clients, fearing being marginalized in this digital revolution.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan summarized the current market situation:
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