heres what most people are missing about why Morgan Stanley launching Bitcoin ETF is the most bullish thing ever- 1) it means the market is MUCH bigger than even crypto professionals anticipated, especially to reach NEW customers. It is unheard of for a vanilla ETF product to launch TWO YEARS after the first to market has already secured the liquidity throne (IAU famously tried a year later, and never caught up). This signals that despite IBIT being the fastest ETF in history to reach $80Bn in AUM (roughly 1/5th the time it took for second place VOO), there is enough untapped interest as viably researched and ascertained through MS' proprietary wealth channels that they are willing to bet that a branded product has commercial viability. it means we are still so early 2) it means that Bitcoin is "socially" important just as much as it is "financially" important as a product to offer to customers. Consider the fact that for being "digital gold" there are virtually no branded gold ETFs in existence, yet for Bitcoin there is. This is because every asset manager knows that having a Bitcoin ETF communicates that they are forward thinking, young, and a little edgy that allows targeting the most challenging investor cohort that everyone wants to reach: UHNW Independent Investors. Morgan Stanley is making the bet that even if their ETF doesn't scale to blockbuster success, there's an intangible benefit that will help build their clout, especially given their focused attention on monetizing E-Trade and crypto via trading/ tokenization partnerships. This becomes especially more relevant as a positive externality if it helps recruit top talent vs competitors (not all IBs are the same!) 3) it is at the core a defensive move against platform disintermediation and fee leakage. By launching their own BTC ETF after IBIT already consolidated liquidity, Morgan Stanley is implicitly acknowledging a hard truth: DISTRIBUTION owns the customer, not product superiority. They are not going to let advisors default to third parties by outsourcing the the economic rent. that's why at first glance while this launch looks irrational through a pure AUM lens, also totally inevitable through a PLATFORM ECONOMICS lens when i think about all these three things, im even more bullish about @bitwise- it means the TAM is bigger, the social capital more important, and distribution more powerful as the platform advantages that are uniquely verticalized for crypto become even more proprietary. Noone understands this and serves advisors in better than Bitwise, already the leader in the #1 crypto index ETF in the US, #1 leader in Solana ETF, and in my humbly biased opinion, the #1 value-add Bitcoin and crypto access provider across its integrated staking solutions and custom strategies bullish Morgan Stanley and Bitwise as a proud alum of both
