Morgan Stanley Joins Wall Street Peers in Embracing Crypto

Morgan Stanley is reportedly entering the cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund (ETF) space.

The Wall Street bank has submitted paperwork for a Bitcoin Trust and a Solana Trust, each of which would hold the individual cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg news reported Tuesday (Jan. 6), citing a regulatory filing.

The report notes that Morgan Stanley is joining several other traditional Wall Street players in increasing their exposure to digital assets. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase have all launched crypto-related projects.

Upwards of $150 billion has already gone into around 130 of these funds, Bloomberg added, citing its in-house data.

More than $150 billion is already parked across some 130 U.S. funds, according to Bloomberg data. Much of that money is tied to Bitcoin-specific products, many of which debuted in January 2024 with immediate success, the report added.

“Crypto is becoming too big to miss for issuers, especially those who have in-house advisers,” Todd Sohn, a senior ETF strategist at Strategas Securities, told Bloomberg. “This is yet another milestone embracement similar to Vanguard allowing crypto ETF trading and BofA allowing for a small allocation. It’s rare a new asset class comes into the ETF space, hence the further embracement by large institutions.”

PYMNTS wrote about his embrace last week, noting that while 2025 saw intense fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market, the year’s biggest story was that of “structural adoption, regulatory articulation and financial integration,” trends that “signal crypto’s steady migration from fringe innovation toward the core of financial architecture.”

The softening of U.S. policy towards crypto played a key role in this shift. The GENIUS Act, signed into law last summer, instituted the first first comprehensive federal framework for regulating stablecoins by requiring full backing with high-quality liquid assets (typically U.S. dollars or Treasuries) and rigorous transparency rules, lessening ambiguity.

There was also a structural aspect to the digital asset industry’s evolution. Institutional capital, now injected in crypto markets, brought with it expectations formed by decades of experience in traditional finance: predictable cash flows, regulatory clarity and risk controls. Retail investors, stinging from earlier collapses, were more selective. Speculation didn’t vanish, though its cultural centrality faded.

“While digital asset markets whipsawed and crypto treasury companies proliferated, the most striking development of 2025 was the normalization, regulation and embrace of stablecoins across traditional finance, FinTech and crypto-native ecosystems,” PYMNTS wrote.

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