Morgan Stanley Files For Bitcoin, Solana ETF With SEC

Update Jan. 6, 12:57 p.m. UTC: This article has been updated to include a paragraph on Morgan Stanley’s prior involvement with cryptocurrency funds.

US investment bank Morgan Stanley has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch two cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs), one tied to Bitcoin and the other to Solana, as Wall Street firms push deeper into regulated digital-asset products.

The proposed Morgan Stanley Bitcoin (BTC) Trust and the Morgan Stanley Solana (SOL) Trust will function as “passive investment” vehicles that hold and track the performance of the underlying tokens, according to Tuesday’s filings with the SEC.

The two funds seek to list their shares on public exchanges, which are usually specified in later 19b-4 filings, not the initial S-1 forms.

If approved, the funds could bring new inflows to Bitcoin and Solana from Morgan Stanley’s over 19 million clients served through its wealth management division as of April 2025, according to the company’s shareholder letter.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $1.1 billion in inflows during the first two trading days of 2026, as analysts pointed to renewed digital asset appetite due to the new year’s “clean-slate effect.”

Related: Strategy kickstarts 2026 with $116M Bitcoin buy as Q4 paper loss hits $17B

Morgan Stanley Investment Management is listed as the sponsor for both proposed trusts. CSC Delaware Trust Company is named as the Delaware trustee. Key service providers, including certain custodial arrangements, were not fully specified in the preliminary documents. Morgan Stanley said it will keep a “substantial portion of the private keys” in cold storage with a “remainder” held in hot wallets.

The two funds won’t seek to generate returns beyond tracking the price of the underlying asset, meaning that the sponsor won’t “speculatively sell” the spot tokens.

Morgan Stanley has been deepening its involvement with the cryptocurrency industry along with other big financial institutions. 

In October, the wealth manager reportedly enabled its financial advisors to recommend crypto funds to clients with individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and 401(k)s, marking a significant policy shift from previously restricting access to high-net-worth individuals with over $1.5 million in assets.

Related: $675M Lighter airdrop ranks among crypto’s 10 largest: Bubblemaps

Wall Street expands regulated crypto

Morgan Stanley’s ETF filings add to a growing institutional interest in regulated cryptocurrency investment vehicles.

It comes a day after the second-largest US bank, Bank of America, began allowing advisers in its wealth management businesses to recommend exposure to four Bitcoin ETFs, Cointelegraph reported on Monday.

The move allows the bank’s wealthiest clients to gain exposure to Bitcoin ETFs, which can now be recommended by the bank’s over 15,000 wealth advisers across its Merrill, Bank of America Private Bank and Merrill Edge platforms.

Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager, enabled crypto ETF trading for its clients in December 2025, a year after BlackRock recommended an up to 2% Bitcoin allocation to its clients, as the first large financial institution to do so, Cointelegraph reported in December 2024.

Magazine: Would Bitcoin survive a 10-year power outage?