📅 January 8 | Digital Assets
For years, Morgan Stanley was the perfect example of institutional caution toward cryptocurrencies. Prudent, skeptical, and aligned with the narrative that the sector was a fringe experiment fraught with regulatory risks. Today, that stance is officially a thing of the past. Quietly, but with a speed that's hard to ignore, one of the world's most influential investment banks is building a complete crypto infrastructure: direct trading, proprietary ETFs, and a digital wallet under its brand.
📖Morgan Stanley plans to enable trading of Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana on its E-Trade platform during the first half of 2026, a move that marks a decisive step in its digital asset strategy. Alongside this expansion, the bank is also working on launching a proprietary digital wallet, planned for the second half of the year, which would place it in direct competition with crypto exchanges and native fintechs in the sector.
Jedd Finn, the bank's head of wealth management, acknowledged in a statement to Barron's that this decision responds to a deeper structural shift. According to Jedd Finn, the traditional financial infrastructure is evolving toward a hybrid model where TradFi and DeFi are beginning to merge, and Morgan Stanley seeks to position itself as one of the leading players in that transition, not as a latecomer.
The announcement came just days after the bank filed S-1 forms with the SEC to launch its own ETFs for bitcoin, ether, and solana, a move that surprised even veteran analysts in the exchange-traded fund market. For many, it confirmed that Morgan Stanley's shift is not merely cosmetic, but strategic.
This change didn't happen overnight. In January 2024, following the approval of the first spot bitcoin ETFs in the United States, the firm had already acknowledged that it represented a “paradigm shift” in the global perception of digital assets. Since then, growth has been explosive. Spot bitcoin ETFs have accumulated over $1.6 trillion in trading volume, with approximately $130 billion in assets under management, led by BlackRock and its IBIT fund.
Topic Opinion:
The announcement of its own wallet is especially revealing because it implies directly custodianship, interaction, and trading of digital assets, something traditional banks avoided for years. This shift demonstrates that the real risk is no longer crypto volatility, but being left out of the new financial infrastructure being built.
💬 Will bank wallets compete with MetaMask and Coinbase?
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