Source: Natalie Brunell
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
Amy Oldenburg, responsible for Morgan Stanley's digital asset strategy, recently appeared on the Natalie Brunell podcast, providing an in-depth analysis of Wall Street's true perspective on Bitcoin, the reasons behind its stagnant price, and the factors that could ultimately drive its price up.
Amy Oldenburg also explained how much Bitcoin Morgan Stanley recommends clients hold, why most financial advisors remain cautious about Bitcoin, and her candid price predictions for the next five years.
PANews has compiled the highlights of the interview.
Host: I'd love to hear about your Bitcoin journey and your experience at Morgan Stanley, as you've been there for twenty years now.
Amy: Yes, time flies, I've actually been at Morgan Stanley for 26 years now. This wasn't my initial plan. I grew up in a small town in Ohio, a typical Gen Xer, deeply relating to those posts on Instagram about growing up in the 80s and 90s. Reflecting on technology's impact from a young age, like playing Atari with my cousins in the basement when I was seven or eight, or when Nintendo and Super Mario first came out, is mind-blowing. Throughout every stage of my life, there have been these transformative technological shocks. One Christmas, my father bought us a Tandy computer, for early PC gaming. In high school, we had a computer lab. In college, a professor got a beta version of the BlackBerry, and we tried it in a marketing class. We couldn't figure out what it was for—it was just hardware with no apps, like the pagers we used in high school; you could send alphanumeric messages, but none of your friends had one, so what was the point?
Host: I remember those full-keyboard phones, it seemed like everyone had one at one point, and then suddenly nobody did.
Amy: Yes, nobody used them anymore. I majored in accounting in college, couldn't study abroad, but I desperately wanted to leave Ohio. In 1999, I joined an exchange program to San Francisco, right during the dot-com bubble, and I had no idea how crazy things were in Silicon Valley at the time. I joined an internet startup building websites for Fortune 500 companies. Two months later, I dropped my accounting major because the technological shift happening was just too significant. While working for that company, we'd go to conferences, and Google was just starting out—they were trying to recruit at conferences with little slips of paper saying, "Go apply for a job at Google on our Craigslist." We thought, what's Google? No way. At each stage, there was technological change, hard to see clearly at the time, or a lot of pushback on how it would truly change our lives, but now I can see the whole picture clearly pieced together. This is very connected to my digital asset and Bitcoin journey.
I ended up at Morgan Stanley after the dot-com bubble burst. The company withdrew its IPO filing, went through two rounds of layoffs, I needed money for rent and absolutely did not want to go back to Ohio, so a friend in HR helped me get this job. It brought me to the emerging markets team, just after the Asian financial crisis and the Mexican Tequila Crisis, when emerging markets were in a bad state. Nine months after I started, 9/11 happened—crisis followed by chaos. I spent several years on the trading desk, doing program trading and emerging markets FX trading. By the time of the Global Financial Crisis, many of the counterparties I traded with back then got into Bitcoin very early. Many early Bitcoin users were from tech or in cross-border and international markets looking for alternatives to the traditional banking system. Many emerging markets we focused on lacked trustworthy financial infrastructure and had severe corruption. I was exposed to Bitcoin very early through these channels.
Host: So you had early personal exposure to Bitcoin. Did you start investing back then, or only now with institutional involvement?
Amy: Not early on. In 2012, my brother suggested mining Bitcoin, but we didn't have hardware with enough memory and couldn't figure out how. The environment was very dangerous back then, you had to go to platforms like Mt. Gox. Also, I worked at Morgan Stanley, afraid of getting fired, so I definitely did not mine Bitcoin myself early on.
Host: Looking back at your time in Morgan Stanley's emerging markets division, are there any lessons directly related to Bitcoin's rise? Do you feel Bitcoin's popularity is justified because of your emerging markets experience?
Amy: Looking back to 2007, right before the Global Financial Crisis, I think everyone is now very familiar with M-Pesa and how mobile money took off in Africa and other emerging markets. Around 2006-2007 when Kenyan telecom Safaricom went public, we invested in them, and it was amazing to see mobile money and digital payment infrastructure become popular so early—we couldn't relate in the US because we didn't have their infrastructure issues. And they were doing this on flip phones. Because formal banking wasn't developed in those markets, they had to rely on this. Years later, I spent time in Tanzania, and what struck me was that in small villages with dirt roads that couldn't guarantee 24/7 electricity, there'd be a Vodafone outlet that looked like a kid's lemonade stand, saying M-Pesa, where you could deposit money into your digital phone. You could see firsthand how deeply the infrastructure penetrated; these people had no other choice. And it brought safety to many. Imagine women carrying vegetables or bread to market, after leaving, they had to carry a large amount of cash back to their local village. With mobile money, they could actually eliminate the risk of cash theft, just deposit it onto a digital card offering a higher level of security than before. Again, these concepts are completely irrelevant to what we deal with in Chicago or New York, or for the average Western investor or banker.
Host: What led Morgan Stanley to publicly support Bitcoin and even issue a spot ETF?
Amy: We are client-driven. If you look at the principles our entire firm lives and works by every day, putting the client first is a huge part of our work, and clients have been asking for it. So, what we could do in the past was very limited, but that changed as the regulatory environment evolved. To give you a bit of context, Morgan Stanley has multiple divisions: we have Institutional Securities (what you think of as investment banking, sales, trading, and research); then we have Wealth Management, which itself has several parts, including Financial Advisors. We made several major acquisitions during the pandemic. One was E*Trade, the self-directed online trading platform. Then we also have the Asset Management business. That's product creation, ranging from corporate pensions, sovereign wealth funds, to mutual funds and ETFs. We not only distribute on our own wealth platform but also through any other distributors we have partnerships with, like other intermediaries, other banks in the US and worldwide. So our business is very diversified, and it's exciting to leverage these services across multiple divisions. As you mentioned Bitcoin investment exposure, we have a Bitcoin ETP, launched by our Asset Management business. Then there's spot trading, which we're now gradually rolling out. So you'll actually be able to buy spot Bitcoin on E*Trade.
Host: At a large institution like Morgan Stanley, this must have overcome many compliance hurdles. Why did it take so long, and why haven't institutions fully embraced Bitcoin?
Amy: There are several reasons. First, there were indeed fairly strict regulations limiting us. I worked in our Asset Management division for many years and was a member of its operating committee, so I'm very familiar. We are different from BlackRock. BlackRock is an independent asset manager. We have an Asset Management business, but we are a bank holding company, meaning we have other additional requirements to comply with, and we are regulated by the Federal Reserve. For us, this was one reason limiting our ability to launch these products as early as some of our independent asset management peers. You can imagine how difficult it was to watch this happen. Sitting here watching your asset management peers in the space launch crypto products, you think, why can't we? So we were limited in what we could do. Something interesting about the spot crypto business on the E*Trade side. We actually had a plan to do this years ago, but unfortunately, around 2020, 2021, many of the vendors we had even done due diligence on, evaluated, and shortlisted as potential partners, they don't exist anymore. So when we revived this plan in 2024 to actually launch, we really had to start the entire plan over from scratch because much of the work we had done previously was effectively obsolete.
Host: The launch of MSBT was the best first-day performing ETF in Morgan Stanley's history. Can you talk about the market demand?
Amy: I was a bit surprised by this too. There were market voices saying we needed to get in, and others questioning what's different when there are already 20+ Bitcoin ETPs. We tried to differentiate, entering the market with a 14-basis-point management fee to lower costs, and being the first in the market to partner with Coinbase and BNY Mellon for ETP custody. Having a Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) issuer and custodian was what we wanted most, because if we want to launch more advanced products, there's still a lot of infrastructure work to do for us and Wall Street.
Host: Would Morgan Stanley launch innovative products like digital credit?
Amy: That's not on our roadmap currently, but I definitely think it needs continued attention. Many people struggle to understand its use cases; many financial advisors don't even understand Bitcoin, let alone advanced products. These products don't fit traditional ratings and frameworks. A colleague told me that 100% of what limits financial advisor interest is "lack of education." It's a bit like the early BlackBerry—the potential is there, but it hasn't fully converged yet; we need time.
Host: Morgan Stanley now recommends clients allocate 2% to 4% to Bitcoin, but as you mentioned, advisor adoption is lagging far behind client demand. So how can we educate this group? Because I feel it might have been related to previous incentives, especially before ETF and ETP products, they couldn't really earn fees from it, right? But now the landscape is changing. How can we bridge this gap to get financial advisors recommending Bitcoin?
Amy: That's a great question. I think we're trying to understand the psychological elements of this process as much as the financial ones. So we made recommendations for moderate to aggressive portfolios. So it's not for all our clients, but for those portfolios where it still falls into the higher-risk category. You might debate me on this, but that's the current positioning; we can even discuss it a bit. Because even as inflation rose, Bitcoin's price fell. It still moves in sync with risk assets; I wish it would behave a bit more like a physical asset like gold. So there are still challenges with price performance. I think the asset's behavior confuses clients: where exactly does it fit in asset allocation? Nonetheless, we gave a 0 to 2% recommendation for some portfolios and a 2% to 4% recommendation for more aggressive portfolios. Bitcoin's price hasn't changed much since we made those recommendations. I think if we had made them when the price was $10k or $15k, and then it went to $100k, it would have taken off with momentum. But interestingly, its price has been range-bound since then; we did briefly get above $100k, but now we're back in the range from when the ETP launched. So, I think it makes people pause and think: what will its true trajectory be? If you look at the long-term chart, the long-term trend is there, but this psychological aspect is a tough battle, especially considering all the other asset classes we're dealing with now. Like private credit has been a hot topic for the past few years. Or the confusion around AI—can AI go higher? Some say no, it can't go higher, others say yes, it can, and it keeps going. And how you manage client investment relationships. Another thing to remember is that not every client is a growth investor. You have to consider that financial advisors do have a fiduciary duty; they have to find assets suitable for the client at hand. Among our many high-net-worth clients, some like innovative things and proactively ask, but others are more comfortable holding reliable assets with good yields and a greater focus on capital preservation.
Host: What do you think is holding Bitcoin back? Why, with all institutions buying now, haven't we reached $200k?
Amy: It's not just one reason. I think we often get caught in a black-and-white debate: will it succeed or fail? Is it this or that? We live in a very complex financial world now. Previously, there was upward momentum because so many new products came to market and could be distributed more. But just last year, there was a crazy surge in trading commodities like gold and silver. Someone mentioned to me that our attention was diverted from crypto because money flowed into commodity trading. So when your attention is divided in terms of asset allocation—like the AI discussion is still competing for funds. Then quantum computing brings confusion, like some saying maybe you should sell your Bitcoin now because quantum computing will destroy everything, I might as well exit at $70k and focus on the next wave of innovation. I think there's this battle of narratives: thinking this is already old tech, we need to move to new tech. All these narratives thrown out there create confusion. So, dealing with these pervasive and fermenting noise narratives is a bit frustrating.
Host: What do you think will be the catalyst to restart Bitcoin as a neutral reserve asset?
Amy: I hate to say it, but it might take a crisis. Sometimes I think it could be a slow-burn crisis, not as dramatic as COVID or the Global Financial Crisis. But I don't know; I think it might take something like that happening, where we break some existing system, and Bitcoin is the only thing left intact. I find a lot of the interest in digital asset activities interesting because my journey started more with Bitcoin, and I believe in decentralization, especially given my emerging markets background—ensuring that even if the power or the entire country collapses, you'll be fine because that ecosystem and blockchain will be maintained by other supporters worldwide. But now we're building a lot of digital asset architecture in a very centralized way. So I don't know if something needs to go wrong there to bring everyone back to the decentralization discussion.
Host: What conditions need to be met for US banks to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets?
Amy: Definitely need to ease the capital treatment burden. I don't think banks aren't doing it because they dislike Bitcoin. Banks aren't doing it because we're also running businesses; if there are more efficient assets from a capital or regulatory perspective, we'll focus on those. We need the environment to support using that asset as collateral, or support its use in trading and the ecosystem. Maybe even broadening the view beyond just talking about Bitcoin. We talked about tokenization and stock tokenization at a conference today because everyone is excited about tokenization again, but if no one wants tokenized stock, there's no need to spend much money doing it. Until we can see market momentum and are ready to support it, ultimately, if traditional assets are where the need for lending and liquidity is—like we can provide stock lending or services around those traditional clients—we'll do that. If there's strong demand to perform such operations for tokenized assets, we'll do that too. I think the same applies to Bitcoin. If we can leverage these assets in the same way, if we can use them as collateral without burdening the balance sheet, then it makes more sense to spend more time on it.
Host: What are your predictions for the adoption of the Bitcoin ecosystem in the next 5 and 10 years?
Amy: I think it will continue to grow. I think by around 2030, we'll see continued moderate adoption increases in the space. I don't think you'll see some amazing J-curve, like it completely takes off by 2027. I think it will be very similar to what we've already experienced—you'll keep seeing more people come in, they get educated about the market, figure things out, we steadily move upward, gradually climbing here. I think that's fine. I'm completely realistic, not making any wild predictions like we're going to $1 million Bitcoin price. That's great, I don't see why not; having seen what I've seen in my life, I believe anything is possible. But something that extreme would also need time to develop, because if I truly believed such an extreme price increase was going to happen, it would also mean other extremely negative events were happening in the world.
Host: What's something about Bitcoin you wish people understood that is currently misunderstood?
Amy: I think there's a misunderstanding now, especially when you see many crypto assets launched—Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, etc.—everyone thinks they're just crypto assets, they're all the same. They're not. They're very different, each distinct in its own way. I think at some point we'll spend more time discussing these differences again, but now it feels like we've entered this lazy state of lumping them together as "just crypto assets," especially seeing more focus on some centralized platform launches. I do feel we need to differentiate it, like you do when focusing on Bitcoin.
Host: There's a lot of infighting in the industry. I'm very focused on Bitcoin, think it's the best savings technology, but some crypto people don't like that.
Amy: Yes. I've thought about this from an applied psychology angle too. The tech world operates on a "winner-takes-all" model, like Nvidia, which now dominates almost the entire market after surviving tough early years. This winner-takes-all culture you see in tech and many different tech-related fields doesn't blend well with financial services. The essence of financial services is redundancy and numerous participants. Look at investment banking—every IPO has multiple banks competing, but they all underwrite those shares. Look at asset management—no single asset manager has over 3% market share. It's highly fragmented in this field. We've found a lack of this biodiversity when looking for tech vendors, often only finding one or two that meet requirements.
Host: Even for those "too big to fail" institutions?
Amy: Yes. I mean, in US wealth management, we are certainly the largest. But I think the one behind us is about 30% smaller. But if you consider global wealth managers, they are extremely fragmented. Europe is extremely fragmented, it's crazy. Asia is the same, very fragmented. Each country has its own structure, its own unique way of thinking about wealth management, etc. It might be done through insurance companies, all depending on their savings plans, some incentivized by government policies. But these two cultures—the culture of many participants and redundancy versus winner-takes-all—are hard to match. Because even when we look for technology vendors to support our business, we constantly find that often only one vendor is doing this thing. We run an RFP process; you know, you typically start with a list of over 10 contenders, narrow to a shortlist of five, then to three, hoping you have a choice to pick a winner from those three. And hopefully those top three are all good choices. But we don't always see that in the tech space. Sometimes there's really only one or maybe two vendors that can even meet your non-negotiable requirements.
Host: Why is there a lack of diversity?
Amy: I think it's just the environment. The financial services environment isn't VC-backed. We exist, we sustain ourselves, we need to survive on our own capabilities and our own revenue. Often, the tech industry has an investor base that has always been fighting for survival. I always remember a serial entrepreneur in San Francisco—I sat next to him at a lunch, this goes back maybe 20 years—he had sold one company and was building another quite successful in many ways. They were building this company, and in my mind I was thinking, what's the revenue model for that thing? Of course, I spoke up, I asked: "What's your revenue model?" He seemed like: You mean my revenue model? Don't you get it? I'm building a network here, more about network effects than revenue.
Host: That reminds me of scenes from the TV show Silicon Valley. Many in the Bitcoin audience have a cypherpunk spirit of eliminating middlemen. To someone like you who's been in institutions for over 20 years, what would you say to those naturally skeptical of your entry into the Bitcoin space?
Amy: I understand. Having seen people in Russia, Ukraine lose access to bank assets and having to find ways to protect savings, I know these are real crises. I align with the cypherpunk philosophy, but the user experience of early tools was terrible. While putting spot Bitcoin into a traditional ETP seems like heresy, masses of people are doing it. Because people also need to live, need loans to buy houses, handle estates. Handing assets to a centralized entity is easier, and you can get up to 50% loan-to-value rates to access liquidity. If you were burned by the FTX event, you were forced towards self-custody to protect yourself. If a crisis happens, and you only hold ETP price exposure, you don't actually own Bitcoin.
Host: Yes, traditional tools unlock liquidity, but the best thing about Bitcoin is it's the first bearer asset you can self-custody, giving you freedom. You can also hold it the traditional way if you accept counterparty risk.
Amy: Exactly. The cypherpunk spirit of self-sovereignty is extremely important, and I hope it lasts long-term. But now with more people like Morgan Stanley at conferences, the pure self-custody discussion seems less prominent; I don't want to lose that part of the ecosystem.
Host: Any final thoughts before we end, or something we haven't covered that you'd like to talk about?
Amy: I think we are still in the early stages here in the digital asset space. Hearing debates about quantum computing and whether it will end everything, or us debating very passive traditional products here, is disheartening. I truly believe there's a long way to go, as we talk about things like Bitcoin credit or other more advanced products. There's more innovation to come. We have new technologies like evolving AI agents; each of us might have our own agent or micropayment channels. All of this will continue to influence what this environment looks like in the future. So I think we're on a long journey with digital assets. I'm very excited to have started the next phase of my career in this space because I think we'll be working on this for a very long time.
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