Morgan Stanley enters the bitcoin ETF race
Morgan Stanley officially launched its Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) on Wednesday, giving the market its first bitcoin ETF issued by a U.S. bank-affiliated asset manager rather than a traditional asset-management shop like BlackRock. The hook is the fee: at 0.14%, Morgan Stanley came in below BlackRock’s 0.25% bitcoin fund, which could add fresh pressure to the fee war. The bigger story however is distribution. Morgan Stanley is not expected to dominate overnight, but it does bring a giant wealth-management machine and advisor network to the table. As Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas puts it, this launch is particularly interesting because “this bank happens to have 16k advisors managing $6T in assets.” Read more →
White House downplays stablecoin deposit risk
The Council of Economic Advisers released a report finding that stablecoin yields pose limited risk to bank lending, contradicting warnings from the banking sector. Eliminating stablecoin yield would lift lending by only $2.1 billion (roughly 0.02% of total loans) while imposing net welfare costs on consumers, according to the study. The findings push back against the Independent Community Bankers of America, which warned that interest-bearing stablecoins could trigger $1.3 trillion in deposit losses. White House economists argue most stablecoin reserves remain within the banking system and are recycled into Treasurys or deposits elsewhere, limiting actual "flight" from traditional balance sheets. Read more →
Nice try, NYT
The New York Times took another swing at crypto’s oldest mystery, publishing a long, multi-year investigation that argues Adam Back is the strongest candidate yet for Satoshi Nakamoto. The case rests on linguistic parallels, early cypherpunk-era overlap, and one alleged conversational “slip,” not conclusive proof. Back has already denied it, saying the similarities are being overstated and that his heavy posting volume on early cryptography forums makes this kind of pattern-matching especially vulnerable to confirmation bias. So the real news is less “Satoshi unmasked” than “a major newspaper made its best case and still did not close the file.” Read more →
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