Morgan Stanley to allow advisors to offer Bitcoin ETF investments

Morgan Stanley has become the first major Wall Street bank to allow its financial advisors to advise on Bitcoin ETF investments.

Morgan Stanley will allow its financial advisors to offer Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs to eligible clients starting Aug. 7, becoming the first major Wall Street bank to do so, CNBC reported.

Morgan Stanley now has about 1,500 advisors who can attract clients to buy shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund. This comes after the SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs in January.

5 years ago I was talking to a Morgan Stanley financial advisor who was laughing at me about crypto. I told him there would come a day when he would sell crypto and the only reason he wouldn’t do it was because he had no way to get paid for it. Who’s laughing now? https://t.co/lmVFRIMJ7e

— Digital Asset Investor (@digitalassetbuy) August 2, 2024

Only clients with net assets of at least $1.5 million, an aggressive risk tolerance, and a desire to make speculative investments are eligible to request a Bitcoin ETF. Investments are for taxable brokerage accounts, not retirement accounts.

So why is this important?

The move would allow financial advisors to offer Bitcoin ETFs to eligible clients and signal broader retail Bitcoin adoption. That would mean more investors would be exposed to the crypto, and Morgan Stanley would be driving demand by making Bitcoin more accessible to a wealthy audience.

“15,000 of the world’s best-paid salespeople will gather the world’s wealthiest families and institutions and invest in Bitcoin. I predict a $3 trillion market cap for Bitcoin in less than 18 months!” investor Gary Cardone wrote on X (formerly Twitter), referring to the news.

A spot crypto ETF tracks the price of a specific crypto and invests portfolio funds in that crypto. These funds trade on public exchanges but typically track a specific crypto.

Like similar funds, crypto ETFs trade on regular exchanges and investors can hold them in standard brokerage accounts. Bitcoin ETFs allow investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin without holding the crypto directly.