Morgan Stanley is still trying to teach clients how to think about bitcoin before it tries to sell them more of it. Amy Oldenburg, the bank's head of digital assets, said Wednesday that the central problem is not product design but education, as the firm tries to move a market it believes is still in its infancy.
Oldenburg said many investors still connect bitcoin with its early use by bad actors, and she argued that the first step is getting past that baggage. “We have to start with bitcoin,” she said on a panel moderated by Tyler Evans, adding that the industry has “so much more work to do.”
The push comes after Morgan Stanley launched its bitcoin exchange-traded product, the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, into a market it says is still early in development. The fund drew more than $100 million in its first week of trading, but all of those initial flows came through self-directed accounts, before the product was made available on Morgan Stanley’s advisory platform. That split matters because it shows where demand has been strongest so far — and where the bank still has work to do.
Oldenburg said take-up through advisors has been slow even after Morgan Stanley announced a 2 to 4 percent crypto allocation recommendation. The bank has been on the market with the product for less than a year, and it is now rolling out internal training so financial advisors can speak to clients about bitcoin with confidence. Oldenburg said the firm spends “hour after hour after hour” on the phone walking clients through models and allocation frameworks.
That effort reflects a broader strategy at Morgan Stanley: offer products for different kinds of client demand while keeping the message on bitcoin distinct from crypto more broadly. The bank ultimately tapped Coinbase and BNY Mellon as custodians for MSBT, and it wants its platform to cover clients who want a direct ETP wrapper. Oldenburg said spot crypto trading is coming for wealth management clients, and that digital credit as a category will take time to develop.
The tension for Morgan Stanley is that the market is growing, but the firm is still educating nearly as much as it is distributing. Oldenburg said Strategy is “a good friend of Morgan Stanley,” and noted that most of the exposure there so far is coming from retail. For now, Morgan Stanley is asking clients to understand bitcoin first, then decide how much of it they want, a sequence that says as much about the state of the market as it does about the bank’s caution.
For investors watching the race for crypto-linked products, the lesson is plain: the sales pitch is no longer just about access. It is about whether Morgan Stanley can make bitcoin feel understandable enough for advisors to recommend and for clients to hold.
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