Morgan Stanley has taken action! Bloomberg analyst: The countdown to the launch of the first "bank-grade Bitcoin ETF" in the U.S. has begun.

Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas stated on Wednesday that Wall Street financial giant Morgan Stanley’s “Bitcoin Spot ETF” is in the final countdown to officially list for trading, and it could go public at any moment in the coming days.
Eric Balchunas posted on social platform X that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has officially announced the listing information for this fund. According to Wall Street conventions, this is usually a precursor to “the fund is about to be issued.”
Morgan Stanley submitted its ETF listing application as early as January this year. Less than a week ago, the company submitted a revised S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stating that this fund, named “Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust,” will be listed on the NYSE Arca electronic trading platform, with the trading symbol “MSBT.”
Although BlackRock and Fidelity have already launched Bitcoin spot ETFs, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in inflows, Eric Balchunas believes that Morgan Stanley’s strong entry has a completely different significance. He said:

Morgan Stanley is the first bank to launch a Bitcoin ETF (which was unthinkable just a few years ago).

This is not just any ordinary bank, but the veritable “Big Brother” of Wall Street, with the largest wealth management advisory team in the U.S., comprising up to 16,000 professional advisors, managing as much as $6.2 trillion in assets, which is twice that of Merrill, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Morgan Stanley’s Head of Digital Asset Strategy, Amy Oldenburg, recently revealed that the popularity of cryptocurrency ETFs is still in its early stages, and wealth advisors are still evaluating how to integrate digital assets into traditional investment portfolios.
She pointed out that the significant demand for Bitcoin spot ETFs in the market currently mainly comes from “self-directed investors,” referring to retail or institutional investors who do not rely on advisors and conduct their own research. She disclosed that as much as 80% of the ETF trading activity on the Morgan Stanley platform comes from these types of accounts.