Morgan Stanley MSBT ETF Nears Launch With NYSE Listing

Morgan Stanley would become the first major U.S. bank to sponsor and issue its own spot Bitcoin ETF.

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Morgan Stanley is preparing to launch a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, and the timeline now appears to be days away. Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas

the New York Stock Exchange has formally announced the listing, a step that typically signals an imminent debut.

The fund will trade on NYSE Arca under the ticker MSBT. Morgan Stanley submitted its initial application in January and filed an amended S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission within the past week.

Morgan Stanley would become the first major U.S. bank to sponsor and issue its own spot Bitcoin ETF. Balchunas noted that this sets the bank apart from rivals like BlackRock and Fidelity, which launched their own spot

funds earlier and have collectively drawn in tens of billions of dollars.

The bank operates a financial advisor network of 16,000 professionals. Those advisors collectively manage $6.2 trillion in client assets, which Balchunas

is roughly double the combined totals at Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.

Despite that scale, Bitcoin ETF activity on Morgan Stanley's platform is still largely self-directed. Amy Oldenburg, the bank's head of digital asset strategy, said roughly 80% of ETF transactions on the platform originate from self-directed accounts rather than advisor-led ones.