Morgan Stanley's MSBT Spots $87 Million in Bitcoin ETF Volume

Morgan Stanley's newly launched spot Bitcoin ETF, MSBT, began trading on NYSE Arca on April 8th. According to Arkham, a platform that tracks MSBT holdings on-chain, the ETF recorded about $34 million in volume on its first day and net assets reached $87 million after five sessions.

Arkham's research team verified the on-chain wallets behind Morgan Stanley's MSBT as a Morgan Stanley entity with high accuracy. The platform is currently the only public venue tracking MSBT holdings on-chain, due to ETFs settling on a T+1 basis and wallet activity lagging issuer announcements by a day.

Morgan Stanley charges 0.14% in fees for MSBT, undercutting rivals such as BlackRock's IBIT, which holds roughly $57 billion in assets under management with a fee of 0.25%. Arkham notes that distribution reach is the swing factor cited by its research team.

Morgan Stanley has one of the largest advisor networks on Wall Street, with around 16,000 advisors overseeing $9.3 trillion in client assets. A 1% allocation across this base would lift MSBT net assets towards $93 billion, according to Arkham's research note.