Morgan Stanley has announced plans to grant select clients exposure to Bitcoin. Their clients will gain exposure from access to funds which hold Bitcoin as an underlying asset. Initially, the investment vehicle will only be available to certain accredited investors and investments will be limited to 2.5% of clients’ net worth as reported via River. Morgan Stanley has $4.4 Trillion AUM.
As of April 1, 2021, Morgan Stanley has declared Bitcoin exposure through multiples funds:
Advantage Asia Opportunity
Counterpoint Global
Developing Opportunity
Global Advantage
Global Permanence
Global Opportunity
Growth Inception
International Advantage
International Opportunity
Permanence Portfolio
Last week, Deutsche Bank released a report calling Bitcoin “too important to ignore.” The report cautions investors that the currency is still volatile and carries unique risks. The firm pointed out that "in terms of total currency in circulation, Bitcoin is the third-largest in the world, after the U.S. dollar and the Euro.” Deutsche Bank is developing a “fully integrated custody platform for institutional clients and their digital assets.”
In other Bitcoin news this week, Tesla has started accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment. The automaker last month revealed that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and that it would soon start accepting the world’s most popular cryptocurrency as a form of payment. Today, Elon Musk announced in a tweet that customers can officially purchase a Tesla with their Bitcoin. “Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly,” he wrote. In perhaps the most bullish piece of their statement, they said “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.”
Finally, The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last Thursday published the Bitcoin ETF application from VanEck, which kicks off a 45-day clock for the regulatory agency to either approve or deny the application. The SEC can also opt to extend the review period. If approved, the ETF would be the first open bitcoin exchange-traded product in the U.S., though there has long been demand for such a product from the crypto community.
There are currently six Bitcoin ETF applications awaiting approval from the SEC, and it feels like this time around it will likely get done. This will likely have a tremendous amount of interest, and significantly increase Bitcoin's liquidity and price discovery. Especially in the wake of the appointment of Gary Gensler as head of the SEC, considering he has literally taught Blockchain economics courses in his time at MIT. There is a very Bitcoin-friendly legislative body in place, and it has only increased over the last 6 months.