Financial services giant Morgan Stanley selected Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon, a global financial services company, and crypto exchange Coinbase as custodians for its Bitcoin Trust Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF), according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The custodians will hold all of the fund\u2019s Bitcoin (BTC<\/a>) in cold storage, or offline methods of storing Bitcoin private keys<\/a>, with a \u201cportion\u201d of the BTC moving to hot wallets connected to the internet at times for creation and redemption purposes, according to the SEC filing<\/a> for Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust. The filing said:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Bitcoin custodians are chartered as a New York state bank, in the case of BNY, and as a New York state limited liability trust company, in the case of Coinbase custodian. The Bitcoin custodians provide custody and trade execution services for digital assets.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Morgan Stanley filed SEC applications<\/a> for spot BTC and SOL (SOL<\/a>) ETFs in January. Both funds are passive investment vehicles that hold and track the prices of the underlying crypto assets.<\/p>\n The ETF reflects growing institutional adoption<\/a> of crypto even amid a marketwide downturn that has left BTC down by about 42% from its all-time high of about $126,000.\u00a0In recent days, BTF ETF flows have flipped, with BlackRock\u2019s spot Bitcoin ETF\u2019s $322 million in inflows logged on Tuesday offsetting outflows from rival funds including Fidelity and Grayscale.<\/p>\n The inflows bring this week\u2019s total<\/a> to $683.3 million, following $787.3 million in inflows last week \u2014 the first positive week after five consecutive weeks of outflows totaling nearly $4 billion.<\/p>\n Related: <\/strong><\/em>Morgan Stanley applies for OCC bank charter to custody crypto<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Coming about two years after Bitcoin ETFs first debuted on US markets, the new fund will establish Morgan Stanley\u2019s foothold<\/a> in crypto and benefit the company even if it does not perform on par with heavyweights like BlackRock\u2019s iShares Bitcoin Trust, according to Jeff Park, advisor to asset management company BitWise.<\/p>\n On the company\u2019s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call in January, chairman and CEO Ted Pick told analysts that the Wall Street bank was \u201c well positioned now in the crypto and tokenized asset space,\u201d adding that \u201dthere is a lot for us to do there.\u201d<\/p>\n Launching an ETF cements the company\u2019s footprint in the crypto sector, while also giving it access to top talent from the crypto industry to build out other projects like tokenized real-world asset<\/a> (RWA) trading, Park said.<\/p>\n![\"bitcoins](\"https:\/\/s3.cointelegraph.com\/uploads\/2026-03\/019cb983-a575-7120-a961-543f6e0c9c4f.png\")
Bitcoins ETF will give Morgan Stanley crypto clout, even if it isn\u2019t a \u201cblockbuster\u201d hit<\/h2>\n