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  • 💰Morgan Stanley takes steps to launch a Bitcoin ETF with fee incentives

💰Morgan Stanley takes steps to launch a Bitcoin ETF with fee incentives

PLUS: Petroyuan is back in the conversation

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Cryptopolitan News
March 20, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

💰Morgan Stanley takes steps to launch a Bitcoin ETF with fee incentives

Morgan Stanley lines up its own Bitcoin ETF to compete in crowded market with the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, Ark and Grayscale. (Finally)

The investment bank filed an amended S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) detailing efforts to list the product on NYSE Arca under the proposed ticker MSBT.

To draw in early flows, Morgan Stanley is waiving fees on the first $5 billion in the fund as it looks to compete with behemoths such as BlackRock and Fidelity.

Fee breaks signal an escalating ETF price war

The Bitcoin ETF space transitioned from first-mover advantage into pricing war.

As multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs are already live and more are expected, firms have been leaning into fee structures and incentives to compete for market share. Morgan Stanley’s waiver indicates a willingness to quickly build scale and attract institutional capital.

However, the bank is yet to reveal its long-term fee structure once the waiver ends.

Institutional partners strengthen fund structure

Morgan Stanley tapped a number of prominent firms to help run the ETF.

Fidelity, Bank of New York Mellon and Coinbase Custody will act as custodians while functions needed to either create liquidity or align prices in share creation and redemption will fall to firms like Jane Street, Virtu Americas or Macquarie Capital.

Foreside Fund Services will take care of marketing compliance, while trustees such as the CSC Delaware Trust Company and AGS Trustees Limited will be responsible for overseeing the legal structure of the fund.

ETF will hold Bitcoin directly

It will issue shares that will both a spot Bitcoin ETF, meaning it is directly holding the cryptocurrency rather than derivatives or leverage.

It will track prices derived from the CoinDesk Bitcoin Benchmark, which collects pricing data across multiple exchanges in order to produce a daily reference rate.

Shares will be issued as blocks called baskets, and the shares can be minted by either

a) Bitcoin (in-kind), or b) cash, creating a hybrid structure for the fund.

Risks remain despite institutional backing

Whatever the institutional setup, the ETF is carrying crypto baggage that’s risky.

Price volatility of Bitcoin is high and the price per fund share may not perfectly track BTC values underlying it at all times. Cold storage and multiple layers of security are the backbone for custody systems, but insurance coverage may not cover all losses.

Moreover, Bitcoin stored in the ETF is not FDIC insured.

Morgan Stanley is venturing into a crowded field

Morgan Stanley manages around $9 trillion in client assets, with even minor allocation shifts having the potential to see billions of dollars of inflows into the ETF.

However, competition is increasing. Over 100 crypto ETF applications are still under consideration with the SEC, while major firms are building out their offerings.

The MSBT launch showcases how traditional finance players are not just moving beyond first adoption, but directly competing for crypto market share.

📊 Poll: Would you invest in Bitcoin through an ETF like Morgan Stanley’s?

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📊 Market Watch

💧 Liquidity migration on-chain, very rapidly

Hyperliquid is becoming one of the deepest liquidity hubs in crypto and no one notices.

The platform has also surpassed $1B in stablecoin liquidity, & supply has nearly doubled over the last few weeks. Meanwhile, open interest on its perpetual futures market has also surged over $1B and more active capital is flowing in.

What’s behind it isn’t only crypto.

With its HIP-3 system, Hyperliquid is linking up with commodities and equities, even the S&P 500, moving tradies into assets that have more obvious directional movement. On the platform, oil futures alone are already achieving in excess of $1B in daily volume.

The change is small but significant.

Crypto-native platforms aren’t just trading crypto anymore: they’re consuming traditional markets.

🌍 Regulation won’t cut it for U.S. crypto — CZ

Changpeng Zhao says the U.S. is still lacking something core to its approach on crypto.

Speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit, CZ noted that although regulatory clarity is increasing, high trading costs and fragmented liquidity still force activity offshore.

The U.S. still has capital, talent and infrastructure. But in Zhao’s eyes, that’s not sufficient if users end up with worse execution than on other global markets.

His argument is simple:

So policy, not just competition, is how you are rewarded with liquidity. Without that, crypto will keep flowing to UAE, Singapore and Hong Kong, no matter how accommodating U.S. regulation gets.

💸 XRP receives $1B institutional vote of confidence

XRP is the only asset, Evernorth plans to use in order to go public.

Now the firm has unveiled a deal worth as much as $1 billion, reportedly supported by Ripple, Pantera, Kraken and SBI. While it's paramount to create a Nasdaq-listed company with XRP as a treasury asset, being an active participant in the ecosystem is equally important.

Among those are running validators, DeFi activity and using Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as an entry point.

It’s a distinct approach to ETFs.

This structure aligns investor returns directly with how the XRP ecosystem expands over time rather than passively exposing them to it.

If successful, it could set the stage for other token-based treasury companies — not just for XRP, but throughout major networks.

 🐥 Top tweets

Are you watching?

The petroyuan is back in the conversation.

Not as a theory, but as a reaction.

With rising tensions in the Middle East and fresh oil market uncertainty, the idea of pricing energy outside the dollar is no longer fringe. China has been building toward this for years, as the world’s largest crude buyer, with yuan-based oil trade already in place since 2017.

But the real question isn’t whether China wants it.

It does.

The question is whether the system around the dollar is ready for anything else.

Friday headline picks

Excited Cat GIF by ZIP ZIP

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