Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Investment Recommendation Explained w/ Amy Oldenburg

Spencer Nichols (0:00)

At the Bitcoin Conference, you noted that Morgan Stanley itself having a position in Bitcoin on its balance sheet is not necessarily out of the question.

Amy Oldenburg (0:07)

It's hard to ever say a hard no in this day and age with how much change we've seen in the digital asset landscape over the last couple of years. There's still a ton of work to be done, definitely an opportunity longer term to continue to put Bitcoin in portfolios across our business and in our client portfolios.

Spencer Nichols (0:29)

Now, I would like to welcome Amy Oldenburg, Morgan Stanley Head of Digital Assets to the show. Amy, how are you doing today?

Amy Oldenburg (0:35)

Spencer, great to see you. Thanks for having me today.

Spencer Nichols (0:38)

Excellent. Well, I am really looking forward to picking your brain here on everything Bitcoin. I think it's been a really exciting time in the market. So much going on on the macro side, but also on the institutional adoption side. There's just been so much growth in the space and I think really renewed interest in Bitcoin as we bounced off the $58,000 lows. Bitcoin has been behaving idiosyncratically on the macro landscape.

So excited to dig in there. Amy, before we get in there, for our audience who they know your role at Morgan Stanley currently, but could you tell us a little bit more about your background when it comes to FX and emerging markets, where that began and how that took you to where you are today?

Amy Oldenburg (1:14)

Sure. I've been at Morgan Stanley for 26 years and most of that career, I've spent in the global market, specifically emerging markets. It's where I started back in 2001 and spent most of my time setting up some of our earliest stage equity markets across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, mainland China, and even our frontier markets. If you think about where Bitcoin fits into that full picture, no surprise to imagine that many of the folks that used to trade FX with pre-global financial crisis found a second career in the Bitcoin and digital asset space in the following years. It's a very similar skill set and something that we're used to just from a risk return profile.

Spencer Nichols (1:56)

Understood. I appreciate you sharing that. I also think that your background being at Morgan Stanley, the first global systemically important bank to issue a spot Bitcoin ETF is just very, very unique. I want to hear more about what that experience was like.

Amy Oldenburg (2:10)

We've been looking at this for a while, really trying to help our clients who had interest in this, gain exposure to it. We saw the continued interest. Really happened pretty quickly. If we think about where we were pre-2024 and now where we are here 2026, numerous Bitcoin ETPs in the marketplace, many of them doing well.

I have to say, I was even a bit surprised myself launching in April where we are so quickly with over $600 million in that Bitcoin ETP. I think that's just really showing you how much continued interest there is out there. There's clients that still don't have any exposure, and definitely a long road to go here to continue to put exposure in portfolios where clients may still not have any Bitcoin exposure within their asset allocation.

Spencer Nichols (2:59)

In doing research for this interview, I saw you made a comment that education is one of the largest barriers to adoption and it's not necessarily the products themselves. Could you maybe paint a picture of who are the people who have yet to make an allocation versus those that you are seeing allocating to something like MSBT?

Amy Oldenburg (3:15)

Sure. I think this is a really important point and it goes back to where we started in emerging markets too.

When I personally became interested in this space, obviously Bitcoin and holding and self-custody in Bitcoin was really the only way you could do that.

Now we have multiple other routes and I think it's really important. Even at Morgan Stanley, we offer Spot Crypto to clients through our E-Trade platform and we have the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ATP. Those are very different products and it gets you different exposure. And I think we have to continue to educate as a client what you're getting out of those two different products. If you're just looking for price exposure, if you're looking to, we do have clients that are just looking to diversify because Bitcoin has been a solid diversifier for that asset allocation, it's great to use just that ETP to do that. If you're looking to actually have physical ownership of that Bitcoin and you want to have the ability to move that off our platform or potentially self custody that, that's an entirely different product. I know for many of us and people that are watching this call, that may be obvious, but it's still something that we educate on every day as we continue to bring more people into the network.