Morgan Stanley Prepares Bitcoin ETF for NYSE Arca Launch, Picking MSBT Ticker

In brief

• Morgan Stanley amended its Bitcoin ETF S-1, adding Fidelity as custodian and the NYSE Arca ticker MSBT.
• The fund will offer a fee waiver on the first $5 billion invested for six months.
• The Solana ETF filing remains unchanged since January, suggesting the Bitcoin fund could list first.

Investment banking giant Morgan Stanley has updated its Bitcoin ETF application, adding Fidelity as a custodian and disclosing that the fund will be listed on the NYSE Arca under the MSBT ticker when it launches. The Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust will offer investors a fee waiver on the first $5 billion invested for six months, the firm said Wednesday in an amendment to its S-1 SEC form. The firm first registered its Bitcoin fund alongside a Morgan Stanley Solana Trust in January. Based on SEC filings, it appears that the BTC fund could get listed before its SOL counterpart. The Solana filing hasn’t been updated since its initial S-1 was filed.

At the time, the bank described both as passive investment vehicles that would seek to track the performance of the relevant cryptocurrency’s price. The initial filings did not yet name custodians, crypto counterparties, or specify fee structures—which is typical for S-1 filings, which are usually amended leading up to a fund’s listing.  Earlier this month, Morgan Stanley said that The Bank of New York Mellon and Coinbase Custody Trust Company would custody the fund’s assets, with Fidelity now joining the list of custodians. The updated application comes as Morgan Stanley has been signaling a broader crypto push.

In February, the bank’s newly appointed digital assets strategy head, Amy Oldenburg, said the firm plans to build proprietary Bitcoin custody and trading services in-house, with yield and lending services also under exploration. “We really need to build this out internally. We can’t just primarily rent the technology to do this,” she said at a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas. Morgan Stanley, which oversees nearly $9 trillion in client assets, confirmed last September that it would offer Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana trading via its E*Trade app. The bank also filed to add an Ethereum ETF to its planned crypto lineup in January, one day after the Bitcoin and Solana registrations. That filing has also yet to be updated since it was first filed.