Morgan Stanley has stepped in! Bloomberg analyst: The first "bank-grade Bitcoin ETF" in the U.S. is counting down to its launch

Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said on Wednesday that Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin spot ETF is in the final countdown before officially listing, and it could go live at any time in the coming days.
Eric Balchunas posted on social platform X that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has officially announced the listing information for this fund. According to Wall Street convention, this usually signals that the fund is about to be issued.
Morgan Stanley first submitted an ETF listing application in January this year. Less than a week ago, the company also submitted a revised S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stating that the fund named “Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust” will be listed on NYSE Arca, a digital trading platform under NYSE, with the trading symbol “MSBT.”
Although BlackRock and Fidelity have already launched Bitcoin spot ETFs, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in capital, Eric Balchunas believes Morgan Stanley’s strong entry has a very different significance. He said:

Morgan Stanley is the first bank to launch a Bitcoin ETF (which was unthinkable just a few years ago).

This is not just any bank, but a true Wall Street heavyweight, with the largest financial advisory team in the U.S., consisting of up to 16,000 professional advisors managing as much as $6.2 trillion in assets—more than Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase combined.

Morgan Stanley’s digital asset strategy head Amy Oldenburg recently revealed that the adoption of cryptocurrency ETFs is still in the early stages, and financial advisors are still evaluating how to incorporate digital assets into traditional portfolios.
She pointed out that the current huge demand for Bitcoin spot ETFs mainly comes from “self-directed investors” (retail or large investors who trade independently without relying on financial advisors), rather than active recommendations from financial advisors. She disclosed that up to 80% of ETF trading activity on Morgan Stanley’s platform also comes from these types of accounts.