Morgan Stanley is moving crypto and tokenized assets closer to its core business as client demand grows across products and services.
Amy Oldenburg, the bank’s head of digital asset strategy, mentioned that the shift now goes beyond limited experiments and is starting to affect daily operations across the firm.
Oldenburg made those remarks on Thursday during an interview with GSR, where she described a broader change inside one of Wall Street’s largest banks.
According to Oldenburg, Morgan Stanley is now working to fit crypto, stablecoins, and tokenized assets into its existing systems instead of treating them as separate offerings.
Crypto moves closer to the bank’s core business
Oldenburg said Morgan Stanley has reached a stage where digital assets are no longer viewed as a side project. The bank now sees crypto as part of normal business activity across several divisions.
Her role, which began in February, covers digital asset strategy and execution across the firm’s institutional wealth and asset management units.
She noted, “There’s an inflection point here,” and added that crypto is “starting to become … part of the daily business operations.”
That comment showed how Morgan Stanley now views digital assets as a business line that needs long-term planning, product support, and internal coordination.
Oldenburg also said the industry has changed from a time when many firms focused on blockchain technology without fully embracing crypto itself. She stated that Morgan Stanley now sees crypto, stablecoins, and tokenized assets as parts of “the same ecosystem.”
Interestingly, the bank’s approach appears focused on integration rather than separation. Instead of building crypto products in isolation, Morgan Stanley wants them to work within the same systems that support other financial products.
That includes making sure the bank can serve clients who want direct crypto exposure as well as those who prefer exchange-traded products.
Infrastructure remains a major challenge
Oldenburg said one of the biggest tasks for large banks is fixing the systems that sit behind digital asset products.
She pointed to wallet infrastructure, custody, compliance tools, and data feeds as key areas that still need work before banks can operate more smoothly across both traditional finance and blockchain networks.
She said Morgan Stanley is reviewing the way transactions move through its systems so the bank can identify friction points.
“We’re unpacking the workflows to understand how money moves, how the transactions happen, where the obstacles are and where the pain points are,” she noted.
A central issue is the link between traditional financial rails and blockchain settlement. Banks can launch products, but they still need reliable ways to handle payment flows, custody, recordkeeping, and compliance in one process. Oldenburg said the lack of alignment in regulation also slows that effort.
“You want that digital cash settlement leg to really deliver on the promise and efficiency of tokenization,” she stated. “Right now, we just don’t have all those pieces and regulations all lined up.”
That comment placed the focus on the gap between market interest and operational readiness.
Tokenization is a tool, not the end goal
Oldenburg said tokenization matters, but she does not view it as the final objective for banks entering digital assets.
She described it as a mechanism that can help firms build more useful products over time. That suggests Morgan Stanley sees tokenization as part of a broader business model rather than a standalone theme.
“Tokenization is not the goal,” she noted. “It’s the mechanism that we need to get into to start to build more of the value add that’s out there.”
Her remarks place tokenization inside a larger effort to improve how financial products are created, moved, and accessed.
Scale remains one of the main issues. Oldenburg said small product sizes can limit how useful new digital asset offerings become for a large institution. If only a limited amount of money enters a product, the case for broader rollout becomes harder to support across a bank the size of Morgan Stanley.
“If we can only get 50 or 100 million dollars into a product, it’s going to be tough,” she noted. “There has to be a path to scalability.”
That view shows the bank is not only testing demand. It is also measuring whether digital asset products can grow enough to fit a large institution’s business model.
Client demand shapes the next phase
Morgan Stanley is also expanding how clients can access crypto. Oldenburg said demand is split between investors who want direct exposure to digital assets and those who prefer ETFs and similar products.
That split means banks must support both types of access if they want to meet a wider range of client needs.
“We’re listening to client needs,” she said. “If clients want to buy spot crypto, we’ll offer spot crypto as long as we can from a regulatory perspective.”
At the same time, she said many investors still prefer ETFs because those products fit more easily into existing portfolio frameworks and advisory models.
Oldenburg said around 80 percent of crypto ETP activity on Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade platform remains self-directed. That figure suggests strong retail interest, but it also points to the need for more advisor education as crypto products become more common inside traditional finance firms.
Additionally, Morgan Stanley’s recent product activity shows that push is already underway. The bank’s MSBT bitcoin ETF launched last week and passed $100 million in its first six days, according to the report.
Morgan Stanley has also moved ahead with broader digital asset plans as it builds services around custody, client access, and product expansion.