Morgan Stanley's 10-Year Bet on the Future of Finance

**Amy Oldenburg** (0:00)
We're not tokenizing for the sake of tokenizing. That is not the goal. There's lots more to come beyond just the tokenization of assets.
And that's something we'll be doing for quite a while. This isn't a 2026 project or a 2027 project. This is the next decade.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:20)
You need no introduction. I have said Amy is the belle of the ball. She is, you know...

**Amy Oldenburg** (0:25)
I forgot to wear my prom dress.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:27)
Yeah, exactly. So, Morgan Stanley has really jumped in the deep end of the digital asset pool.
I think most recently, everyone's been talking about the Bitcoin ETF that you guys have launched, which by the way is like three weeks old and has over 200 million in assets. Which is absolutely amazing. Congratulations.

**Amy Oldenburg** (0:46)
Thank you.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:47)
But what you guys are doing is much more than just an ETF and market. So, walk me through a little bit about the thinking and the strategy associated with Morgan Stanley's digital asset aspirations.

**Amy Oldenburg** (0:58)
Yeah, and maybe like stepping back a little bit. I think everyone feels that, you know, we just started this journey within the last few months, but this has really been years in the making that we've been working on a lot of this down quietly in different parts of the business. The regulatory landscape has changed and allowed us to come out more publicly with some of our market activities. And I think the really interesting thing to talk about too, it's not just our wealth business, it's not just the ETPs, it really is happening across the entire firm. And that's one reason even I'm in the role that I'm in now at the top of the house. We're doing it across our institutional securities business, we're looking at opportunities across wealth, and then also with the ETPs. So Bitcoin ETP, I think we're three and a half weeks in?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:52)
Yeah, it's incredible. Let me pause you for one second. Just so you know, I'm a little bit of an ETF geek.
There's about 1,000 ETFs launch every year these days. This will be probably the third year that we have about 1,000 ETFs. Less than 2% will get to 50 million after a year. And that is also not taking into account survivor bias, so a lot just close. So after three-ish weeks, we're at over 200 million is essentially like astronomical for context.

**Amy Oldenburg** (2:21)
And just to set the record straight, almost all of that first week or two of activity was self-directed, meaning it was not our advisors that were selling this. This is just individuals making the decision to put assets into the ETP, which is amazing for me to see. I think the other thing, maybe just to highlight there, we've talked a little bit about in-kind transactions or in-kind subscriptions into ETPs. Amazing to see how much activity that we're fielding in terms of spot crypto holders that are also looking to put assets into ETPs.
That's a big transformation going from the DeFi landscape to a centralized product.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:07)
I mean, if we just play around with simple maths, roughly a $7 trillion platform that you have with wealth, if you just imagined 50 basis points is, you know, 35 billion and 100 basis points would be 70 billion. So there's an opportunity that there's off-platform assets that are sitting natively in token form that could imagine to come into the ETF, which you're offering a solution to your clients.

**Amy Oldenburg** (3:35)
100%.
And by the way, if that's what the client wants, I think we're there to offer optionality. We're going to serve our client wherever their need is and make sure that we have multiple opportunities for them to have those financial services however they want to engage with it. So if that works for them to do an in-kind subscription, that's one solution. But later this year, we'll also be supporting spot crypto trading on our wealth platform. So if it also works for them to continue to hold those assets natively, that we can support that going forward too. And I think ultimately, that's the model we'll continue to see roll out. We'll live in a hybrid world for quite some time, where we'll be supporting both the digital native and the traditional business all in one. But ultimately, that's what our clients want. Our clients want one view, universal, all of their assets in one place. And for anyone who's been living this life, holding both crypto assets and traditional assets as part of their net worth, it can be a very challenging experience, and hopefully we can make that better going forward.