Guest: Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy, Morgan Stanley
Host: Natalie Brunell
Podcast source: Natalie Brunell
Original title: When Will Bitcoin Hit a New ATH? Wall Street Insider Explains
Broadcast Date: June 10, 2026
Key points summary
Morgan Stanley, which manages trillions of dollars in assets, is now pushing Bitcoin to its clients—Amy Oldenburg, its head of digital asset strategy, reveals a stark contrast in this conversation: MSBT set a record for the bank's first-day ETF offerings, while most financial advisors remain reluctant to recommend it to clients because Bitcoin's price has been virtually stagnant since its introduction. She doesn't believe the next major surge will come from a new product or favorable policy, but rather requires a catalyst that truly disrupts the traditional financial system. She wouldn't be surprised if Bitcoin breaks the million-dollar mark within five years, but simply hopes the rise will be slow.
Summary of key viewpoints
Technological Roots: From the 1999 Dot-com Bubble to Emerging Markets
"Every stage of my growth has been accompanied by some kind of technological change that seemed extremely obscure at the time, and even faced huge skepticism from the entire internet—and only today can I finally clearly see how the whole historical puzzle is pieced together."
"Back then, those old-timers who were my counterparties in the market every day stood by me until the 2008 global financial crisis. We weathered that financial tsunami together, and it was the core members of that group who later became some of the earliest hardcore Bitcoin buyers."
"The earliest evangelists and heavy users of Bitcoin came not only from Silicon Valley's geek community, but also largely from cross-border and international financial markets—those who were on the front lines of trading, desperately searching for alternatives to the traditional centralized banking system."
Why Bitcoin made sense from its early days
"In those underdeveloped markets, the traditional physical banking system is extremely outdated, and the vast majority of people at the bottom of society will never be able to open a bank account in their lifetime. Therefore, they can only rely on and embrace mobile money wholeheartedly."
"You're in a small village where electricity isn't available 24/7 and the roads are all dirt tracks, but there's a Vodafone kiosk that looks like a lemonade stand, with 'M-Pesa' written on it—that's where you put your cash in your phone."
"Because we have worked extensively in many emerging markets, we know that there are plenty of reasons for people to embrace decentralization in those places—the traditional financial infrastructure there is extremely unreliable, lacks any sense of contractual obligation, and is even accompanied by extremely serious systemic corruption. We experienced these dark secrets firsthand when we were on the trading floor."
Why aren't institutional investors fully committed to Bitcoin?
"Our entire group is legally a bank holding company. This means we must adhere to a much stricter set of capital adequacy and risk control requirements that are entirely within the banking system—because the Federal Reserve stands firmly above us."
MSBT demand hits record high
"Of course you'll sing the praises of your product, but you don't really know what will happen until it's actually launched. The results surprised many people."
"Combining GSIB-level issuance and GSIB-level custody is both our first goal to bring to market and something we want to use to understand what the entire ecosystem still needs to develop."
Will Morgan Stanley issue digital credit?
"I know there's something to it in digital lending—but most people don't even understand Bitcoin, let alone the more advanced products on top of that."
"Education is what limits communities and financial advisors' access to these products."
"Some products have very appealing elements, but there's always something that makes them incomplete—a bit like the early days of BlackBerry."
The advisor gap: Why doesn't everyone recommend Bitcoin?
"If we had given the recommendation at $10,000 or $15,000 and it later rose to $100,000, the momentum would naturally have been behind us—but interestingly, we've been trading sideways in a roughly consolidating range since the recommendation."
"Financial advisors have a fiduciary responsibility to select suitable assets for their clients. Not every client is a growth investor."
What are the reasons for the hindered development of Bitcoin?
"We're always caught in black-and-white arguments: will Bitcoin succeed or fail? But we live in a very complex world where various narratives are intertwined, distracting attention and allocation."
"The attention and liquidity of mainstream global capital in asset allocation have been brutally fragmented."
"I hate to say it, but we may really need a crisis—we've shattered the existing system, and Bitcoin is the only thing that's intact."
Company Balance Sheet
"Banks don't hold Bitcoin not because they dislike it, but because they have more efficient asset options—if capital regulatory conditions don't improve, we'll focus our efforts on more profitable assets."
"If nobody really needs tokenized stocks, there's no reason for us to spend too much money on it—we'll do it when demand comes. The same logic applies to Bitcoin."
The Future of Bitcoin
"I don't think we'll see a magical J-curve that suddenly takes off in 2027. More likely, we'll continue our slow climb, with more participants gradually entering the market, getting educated, and slowly understanding."
"Bitcoin reaching a million dollars, that's great, I don't see anything impossible about it. In all my life, I believe anything is possible."
Winner-takes-all technology and redundant finance: the future of the industry
"That 'winner-takes-all' culture is visible in the tech industry and many technology-related fields, but it has absolutely nothing to do with financial services. The essence of financial services is redundancy and numerous participants."
"When we do RFPs, we start by screening more than ten companies, and finally hope to have the top three options—but in the tech field, often only one or at most two can truly meet our hard requirements."
Responding to public skepticism towards large banks
- "In emerging markets, in those places, the public's 'distrust' of the traditional official financial system is not some abstract theory written in textbooks, but a stark reality that bleeds every day."
- "From the perspective of a die-hard Bitcoin believer, taking your spot Bitcoin and putting it into a traditional financial institution's ETP is seen as heresy by many, but it's happening on a scale I never anticipated."
- "Holding ETP shares is not the same as holding Bitcoin—you have price exposure. This needs to be emphasized repeatedly."
Technological Roots: From the 1999 Dot-com Bubble to Emerging Markets
Host Natalie Brunell: Today's guest is Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Morgan Stanley. Amy, I'd especially like to hear your story of how you got involved with Bitcoin and your legendary career at Morgan Stanley over the past two decades.
Amy Oldenburg:
I've been at Morgan Stanley for 26 years, though it wasn't originally my plan. I grew up in a small Midwestern town in Ohio. Interestingly—like you asked me in our pre-show chat: "How did you get to where you are today? How did you embark on this crazy journey with digital assets and Bitcoin?"
I'm a Gen X like you, and I deeply resonate with your experiences. Sometimes, when I see those online jokes about how kids grew up in the 80s and 90s—and then I think back, technology actually started subtly reshaping us very early in our lives. I remember when I was seven or eight, my cousins and I would spend all our time in the basement playing the Atari Famicom. Then the Nintendo Evolution Soccer (NES) came out, and Super Mario Bros. drove us crazy. It feels like every key moment in my life has been accompanied by some kind of disruptive technological wave.
One Christmas, my dad bought us a Tandy computer, and we started tinkering with the earliest computer games—it seemed incredible at the time. Then technology continued to advance rapidly. In high school, we were still learning the most basic typing in the computer lab, and by college, technology was beginning to penetrate our daily lives more deeply.
I remember a professor got a beta test of BlackBerry, and our entire marketing class became BlackBerry seed users. Back then, we sat in the classroom, completely baffled as to what this thing could be used for—it didn't even have an app, it was just a piece of hardware. We even complained, "Okay, what's the difference between this and our high school pagers? Even though it can send letters and numbers, none of our friends have one, so who are we supposed to be?" Later, it evolved into a version with a signature full keyboard, and at one point, everyone had one, but then it was suddenly rendered obsolete—and that's exactly what happened.
What's even more interesting is my major. I was studying accounting, but the school stipulated that accounting majors couldn't go abroad as exchange students. At that time, all I could think about was escaping Ohio—the farther the better, I'd be willing to be sent to the international market across the ocean. Since I couldn't go abroad, I settled for a domestic exchange program in San Francisco. Because I was studying in New York at the time, in 1999, I packed my bags and went to San Francisco—only to land right in front of me the height of the dot-com bubble.
Back then, I was young and had no idea how crazy the world was. In Silicon Valley, I started working at an internet startup the very next day, mainly building websites for Fortune 500 companies. After two months of paid internship, I decisively dropped out of accounting, abandoning even my major. Because the feeling was just too strong—this technological revolution was absolutely going to profoundly disrupt the future.
Back then, we traveled with the company to various industry summits. Google was just a fledgling startup; they could only hand out small notes at the events to recruit, saying, "If you're interested, please go to our Craigslist page to apply for a job at Google." We raised an eyebrow: "Google? What a terrible name! This business model doesn't make any sense—who would use it to search for things? It's impossible to succeed."
So you see, every stage of my growth has been accompanied by some kind of technological change that seemed extremely obscure at the time and even faced huge skepticism from the entire internet—and only today can I finally clearly see how the whole historical puzzle is pieced together.
As for how I got into the digital asset and Bitcoin space—I actually joined Morgan Stanley after the dot-com bubble burst. When the bubble burst, I stayed at the startup in San Francisco, and was later transferred back to the New York headquarters for a full-time position. But everyone knew then that the environment had completely collapsed— we were even forced to withdraw our S-1 filing (IPO prospectus), failing to go public, followed by two rounds of brutal layoffs within the company. I had to immediately activate Plan B because I needed to pay rent—and I absolutely refused to go back to my hometown in Ohio.
It was at that crucial juncture that I unexpectedly landed a job at Morgan Stanley. A close friend of mine worked in HR at Morgan Stanley, and she came to me: "I know you're not interested in traditional finance right now, and you're focused entirely on technology. But I have a ton of openings that urgently need filling. If you know anyone looking for a job or want to interview, just let me know." I thought to myself, maybe I should give it a try myself, at least I'll have a backup plan.
And so, I transitioned into Morgan Stanley's emerging markets team . The aftershocks of the Asian financial crisis (1997) hadn't yet subsided, and the Mexican tequila crisis (1994) had only recently passed—emerging markets were in dire straits. The team I joined had changed leaders several times in just a few years. At the same time, we were clearly experiencing the severe impact of the bursting tech bubble on financial assets—around 2000 or 2001. Even more dramatically, exactly nine months after I joined, 9/11 broke out. Those days were a series of crises, one after another, while underlying technological changes were being pushed forward at a frenzied pace.
During my time at Morgan Stanley, I spent several years working on the trading desk, specializing in programmatic trading and emerging market forex trading. The group of seasoned veterans who were my counterparts in the market back then stood by me until the 2008 global financial crisis. We weathered that financial tsunami together, and it was the core members of this group who later became some of the earliest hardcore Bitcoin buyers.
The earliest evangelists and heavy users of Bitcoin came not only from the Silicon Valley geek community, but also largely from cross-border and international financial markets—those who were on the front lines of trading back then, desperately searching for alternatives to the traditional centralized banking system.
Because we have worked extensively in many emerging markets, we know that there are plenty of reasons for people to embrace decentralization in those places—where traditional financial infrastructure is extremely unreliable, lacks any sense of contract, and is even accompanied by extremely serious systemic corruption, all of which we personally experienced on the trading floor back in the day.
Therefore, it was through these hands-on experiences in financial transactions, coupled with the network I built in the tech industry early on (for example, some of my friends developed peer-to-peer music file sharing/P2P software very early on), that I was able to gain an extremely keen and early understanding of Bitcoin. And those digital transaction and risk-resistance technical capabilities from back then were later very smoothly transferred to the digital asset field.
Why Bitcoin made sense from its early days
Host Natalie Brunell: Since you got involved in this circle so early, did you start investing early on, or did you choose to remain inactive until traditional financial institutions officially entered the market and the entire industry became compliant before you started building your portfolio?
Amy Oldenburg:
Actually, no. It's funny, my brother came to visit last week, and we were reminiscing about how, around 2012, he excitedly came to me saying he wanted to get some machines to mine Bitcoin. I laughed at him, saying we didn't have any hardware powerful enough to build a mining rig.
And you have to understand, the cryptocurrency environment back then was incredibly cutthroat and dangerous—completely unlike today, where you can simply download a beautiful and elegant Coinbase app and deposit and withdraw Bitcoin safely with a few clicks in your browser. Frankly, back then, if you wanted to buy cryptocurrency, your only option was to deal with a shady operation like Mt. Gox . At the time, I was working at Morgan Stanley, and I was constantly worried: if I dared to touch this stuff, I'd probably be fired tomorrow. For me then, the compliance risks and operational costs were simply too high. So, although I've been closely following and spending countless hours observing its evolution, I'm definitely not one of those hardcore miners who were glued to their computers coding and mining in the very early days.
Host Natalie Brunell: Let's broaden our perspective—looking back on your investment experience in emerging markets, is there a core conclusion that directly corresponds to Bitcoin's subsequent strong rise? Was there a hard-won lesson from emerging markets that made you suddenly realize, "Oh! So that's the root of Bitcoin's rationale!"
Amy Oldenburg:
Yes, and this intuition is extremely strong. Let's go back to 2007, just before the global financial crisis. I think those who follow fintech today are already familiar with M-Pesa (Kenya's mobile wallet benchmark) and the explosive growth of mobile payments in Africa and other emerging markets. But few people know that our Morgan Stanley team was already deeply involved in and invested in the IPO of its parent company, Safaricom , around 2006 or 2007.
Back on the East African front, we witnessed firsthand how digital currency and mobile payment infrastructure swept across the land at a staggering pace—the explosive force was truly mind-blowing. Westerners living in the US at the time were completely unable to grasp this transformation, because our banking system was far too mature; Americans simply didn't understand the pain points faced by ordinary Africans. Even more absurdly, the African people were using the most outdated non-smart flip phones to handle this entire digital financial process; it wasn't even the smartphone era .
In those underdeveloped markets, the traditional physical banking system is extremely outdated, and the vast majority of people at the bottom of society will never be able to open a bank account in their lifetime, so they can only rely on and embrace mobile money wholeheartedly.
Later, I spent some time in Tanzania. When you walk through those most remote, unpaved villages where even the main roads aren't paved and electricity isn't available 24 hours a day, you'll suddenly see a tiny yellow Vodafone kiosk by the roadside. The kiosk is as simple as a lemonade stand that village kids would make while playing house, but it has four very eye-catching words painted on it: M-Pesa.
That's where local villagers top up their cash and turn it into digital assets on their phones. When you stand there in person and witness firsthand how deeply this decentralized digital infrastructure penetrates society, see these people on the fringes of finance using it as their only option to change their fate, and experience the tangible sense of security it brings to these ordinary people, the emotional impact is indescribable.
Try to empathize with that scene: African women who go to the market every day to sell vegetables, bread, or set up stalls to make a living. In the past, when they finished their work and walked home at night back to their villages, their bodies were stuffed with heavy amounts of cash they had just earned. In the local area, where security was chaotic, this was tantamount to carrying a time bomb with them.
But since the advent of mobile digital currency, as soon as they finish their business, they can immediately deposit their cash into roadside digital outlets, turning it into a string of encrypted numbers on their phones or digital cards. When they walk home empty-handed in the dark, they eliminate the imminent threat of violent robbery and gain an absolute sense of technological security that they have never experienced in traditional financial societies.
Have you noticed? This fundamental concept, intertwined with finance, assets, and personal safety, is completely on a different wavelength from that of ordinary Western investors or Wall Street bankers sitting in Chicago or New York offices, living sterile lives. And this is precisely the core essence of Bitcoin's early value logic.
Morgan Stanley Spot Bitcoin ETF
Host Natalie Brunell: So what exactly prompted Morgan Stanley to step into the public eye—not only publicly expressing its support for Bitcoin, but also directly launching spot Bitcoin-related products to the market (such as the access and distribution of spot Bitcoin ETPs/ETFs)?
Amy Oldenburg:
The root of the problem lies in "customer-driven." At Morgan Stanley, one of the core principles upon which the entire company survives and operates every day is customer-driven. Customers are constantly expressing strong demands, and as the service provider, we naturally have to adapt to the market.
Of course, due to the industry's specific compliance framework, there are red lines to what we can do at different stages. However, with the continuous loosening and evolution of the regulatory environment—even looking at our ETRADE business—I think it's necessary to quickly outline Morgan Stanley's vast business landscape before answering this question.
We have several distinct business units: Institutional Securities —which is what people typically understand as investment banking, sales, trading, and research; then Wealth Management —which has several sub-segments, including financial advisory, which we'll discuss later. We've also made a series of large acquisitions, one of which was ETRADE —a self-trading online platform that brought us to a completely different client base. Then there's our Asset Management unit —the product development unit, ranging from corporate pension funds to sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds, and ETFs.
These products are distributed not only on our own wealth management platform—which is just one channel—but also across the U.S. and globally through relationships with other intermediaries and banks. Having such a diversified business and the ability to leverage multiple departments simultaneously is very exciting.
Regarding Bitcoin exposure, we have Bitcoin ETPs, which come from our asset management department. Then there's spot trading, which we're gradually rolling out on ETRADE, allowing you to buy spot Bitcoin directly on ETRADE.
Why aren't institutional investors fully committed to Bitcoin?
Host Natalie Brunell: I understand that for an institution as large as Morgan Stanley, launching these things requires overcoming numerous hurdles—compliance, legal issues. Could you tell us the inside story, why it took so long? On one hand, optimists might say, "In just sixteen years, it's already a miracle that Bitcoin has penetrated a mainstream bank like Morgan Stanley." But on the other hand, radical believers might counter, "Since the opportunity has arrived, why aren't mainstream institutions willing to bet their entire fortunes and fully commit to Bitcoin?"
Amy Oldenburg:
There are several different issues. First, the outside world often underestimates the extremely stringent systemic regulatory constraints that are looming over us. Here, everyone must clarify a concept: Morgan Stanley's underlying architecture is fundamentally different from BlackRock's.
BlackRock is a purely independent asset management company, while Morgan Stanley, although it also has a large asset management business, is legally a bank holding company. This means that Morgan Stanley must adhere to a much stricter set of capital adequacy and risk control requirements that are entirely within the banking system—because the Federal Reserve stands firmly above us.
This is one of the reasons why we simply couldn't launch these pre-encrypted products as early and flexibly as our independent asset management peers, like BlackRock. You can imagine how frustrated and uncomfortable we felt sitting in our offices when front-end technology was making great strides and we watched helplessly as our competitors rushed to launch encrypted products—we could only stare at each other, wondering countless times in our hearts why we couldn't do it?
Another interesting point is that we actually had a plan to launch a spot crypto business on E*TRADE a few years ago. Unfortunately, many of the suppliers we conducted due diligence on, evaluated, and even shortlisted for in 2020 and 2021 no longer exist. So when we restarted the plan in 2024, we had to rebuild the entire scheme from scratch, and much of the work we did before was no longer applicable.
MSBT demand hits record high
Host Natalie Brunell: The MSBT launch set a new record for the best first-day performance for an ETF in Morgan Stanley's history. What kind of actual demand are you seeing?
Amy Oldenburg:
As the creator of a product, you'll naturally cheer it on enthusiastically before its launch—but to be honest, before the code and product are actually brought to market and officially launched, you're completely on edge, and nobody knows what will happen.
We've received a lot of feedback from Wall Street, from those saying "You have to get on this track" to others asking, "Why are you coming? There are already about twenty Bitcoin ETPs on the market, what makes your product different?" We've done our best to differentiate ourselves—bringing institutional-grade architecture to this product. We entered the market with a 14 basis point fee, putting a lot of effort into our total administrative fees. We've also focused on the custody aspect; we've partnered with both Coinbase and BNY, making us the first ETP in the market to collaborate with BNY on custody.
Therefore , combining GSIB-level issuance and GSIB-level custody is both our first goal to bring to market and a way for us to understand what the entire ecosystem still needs to develop. Because if we move from this to more advanced products, there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of infrastructure, whether it's BNY, ourselves, or other Wall Street GSIBs, before we can truly get into that 24/7 flywheel and continue to advance in this market.
Will Morgan Stanley issue digital credit?
Host Natalie Brunell: Will Morgan Stanley launch innovative products like the digital credit offered by Strategy?
Amy Oldenburg:
Good question. I've met them at several events in recent months, and we've done a lot of work with their team—we are one of the main participants in the issuance of the STRK digital lending product, so we have a thorough understanding of the underlying logic and operating mechanism of this type of asset.
Going back to the story I told earlier—I think it's difficult for people to truly see its place in the overall puzzle. When I talk to financial advisors, some people understand it very well, but a large portion don't even understand Bitcoin, let alone the more advanced products above it. There's still a lot of educational work to be done. Moreover, these products have some characteristics; they don't fit into traditional classification frameworks, they don't have the ratings that some investors are used to, they look different, and they behave differently. How do we help people understand them?
Today I asked a colleague who has been involved in all ETP launches, " What do you think limits the community, the financial advisor community's access to these products—whether it's an ETP, a STRK, or something else?" She replied directly, "100% education. "
Some products have very appealing elements, but there's always something that makes them incomplete, a bit like the story of Blackberry. I know something's there, but it just doesn't fit perfectly yet. However, I believe it will eventually come to fruition; it just needs more time.
The advisor gap: Why doesn't everyone recommend Bitcoin?
Host Natalie Brunell: You just mentioned financial advisors. As far as I know, Morgan Stanley currently allows a 2% to 4% tactical allocation to Bitcoin in its official strategy. But as you said, the adoption and recommendation speed by wealth advisors is far behind the fervent demand from front-end clients.
Amy Oldenburg:
That's a great question, and we're trying to understand the psychological factors behind it, which are just as important as the financial factors. Our recommendations are for moderately aggressive portfolios, not for all clients, but for those whose risk appetite aligns with ours.
From a macroeconomic perspective, even though we've recently seen a continued rise in global inflation, the price of Bitcoin has actually declined. Its actual market performance continues to closely mirror that of high-risk assets like stocks. Frankly, from my personal asset management intuition, I sincerely hope it can undergo a transformation soon, behaving more like a true hard asset like gold, possessing genuine cross-cycle inflation-hedging properties. Therefore, this discrepancy between the performance of this "theoretical digital gold" and its "real-world high-risk asset" has indeed left countless clients and financial advisors extremely perplexed.
That being said, Morgan Stanley's official allocation recommendations are indeed clearly stated in black and white—some balanced portfolios offer 0% to 2%, while some more aggressive mutual growth portfolios offer 2% to 4%. However, what's extremely subtle is that since we released these allocation recommendations, Bitcoin's price has actually been consolidating sideways in the long term , right?
If Morgan Stanley had given its official recommendation when Bitcoin was at a super bottom of $10,000 or $15,000, and it subsequently surged to $100,000, then the frenzied profit-making effect and market momentum would naturally have propelled all advisors forward. Interestingly, however, since the recommendation, we've seen it trade sideways within a range, making people more hesitant about its future direction, and the psychological battle has been extremely difficult.
In particular, you also have to deal with other asset classes simultaneously. Private lending has been very popular in the past few years, and the soaring valuations in the AI sector have left everyone feeling confused and bewildered. When you're managing these relationships for clients, there's one more thing to remember: not every client is a growth investor. Financial advisors have a fiduciary responsibility; they must find suitable assets for their current clients. Many of our clients with substantial wealth either have a strong affinity for innovative ventures and will actively seek them out, or prefer to place their assets in more reliable ones, valuing stable returns and capital preservation.
What are the reasons for the hindered development of Bitcoin?
Host Natalie Brunell: I've heard people say that "Bitcoin has basically gone back and forth from its 2021 high." I understand. Of course, you need to take a longer view and look at the time frame, but what do you think is holding Bitcoin back? We're now in 2026, so many institutions and banks have entered the market, what do you think is really holding Bitcoin back? We're now in 2026, so many top institutions and mainstream banks have publicly entered the market, and StrategyEco is even mechanically and frantically buying every Monday without fail, why haven't we reached the peak of $200,000 yet?
Amy Oldenburg:
This is definitely not due to a single factor. We tend to get caught up in black-and-white, binary debates: Will Bitcoin ultimately succeed or fail and go to zero? Is it digital gold or a bubble? But the reality is that we live in a world of complex game theory with extremely complex underlying logic. There was indeed a bull market recently, with so many mainstream financial products launching in quick succession, greatly expanding its global distribution channels. But let's not forget that just last year, traditional financial markets experienced an extremely frenzied surge in gold and silver prices , and commodity trading was incredibly hot. I once spoke with a colleague who bluntly told me, "We've shifted our attention away from crypto assets; now everyone in investment banking is focused on intraday commodity trading." You see, the attention and liquidity of mainstream global capital in asset allocation have been brutally fragmented.
Host Natalie Brunell: So what do you think would be the catalyst to restart Bitcoin and make it more in line with what many Bitcoiners see as a neutral reserve asset?
Amy Oldenburg:
I think it will take time. I'm reluctant to say it, perhaps because I grew up experiencing the global financial crisis, the tech crisis, 9/11, and even the COVID-19 pandemic. Crisis events completely change our way of thinking, and sometimes we never go back to old ways of thinking. I'm reluctant to say it might require a crisis; sometimes I think it might be a "slow-moving crisis," less dramatic, not as intense as COVID-19 or the global financial crisis, but I'm not sure. Maybe it really needs that kind of event: we shatter the existing system, and Bitcoin is the only thing that remains intact.
The evolution of digital asset activity is also very interesting to me. My journey began more with Bitcoin, and I believe in decentralization, especially from an emerging market perspective—even if the power goes out or an entire country collapses, you're still okay because the ecosystem and the blockchain are sustained by supporters elsewhere in the world. Right now, we're building a lot of digital assets in a very centralized way. So I don't know, maybe something will go wrong and bring people back to the discussion of decentralization.
Last week at an event, I discussed the concept of agency with someone. We might one day, when we truly understand the value of proof-of-work, return to its origins: when our inboxes are destroyed by AI agents, flooded with spam and fakes, making it impossible to distinguish between genuine and fake, we'll realize that a large part of Bitcoin's early technology was designed to solve the problem of spam in email inboxes. We might really have to go back and say, "This is absolutely necessary." My inbox is being destroyed by things sent by agents; I can't tell if a transaction is real or fake—how do you verify it? We might really have to go back to the origin story of Bitcoin.
Company Balance Sheet
Host Natalie Brunell: Many projects and tokens are nominally decentralized, but in reality, they are highly centralized and mostly speculative. So what conditions would it take for US banks to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets?
Amy Oldenburg:
It's certain that we won't bear such a heavy burden in terms of capital handling. And I think it's not that banks aren't doing it, or that they dislike Bitcoin, but rather that we also need to do business. If there are assets that are more efficient from a capital handling or regulatory perspective, we will naturally prioritize those. This isn't an anti-Bitcoin stance; it's just that we need an environment that supports the use of this asset from the perspectives of collateral, trading, and the ecosystem.
This isn't limited to Bitcoin; today we're discussing tokenization and tokenized stocks in a meeting. Of course, everyone's hyping up tokenization again. But if nobody really needs tokenized stocks, there's no incentive for us to spend so much money on it. We can certainly be prepared and provide support, but ultimately, if traditional assets are where the lending demand lies, we can do traditional securities lending and provide services centered around traditional clients. If demand arises, and there's a demand for tokenized assets, we'll do the same.
The same logic applies to Bitcoin. If we can use these assets in the same way, as collateral, without increasing the burden on our balance sheets, we will be more motivated to spend more time on this path.
The Future of Bitcoin
Host Natalie Brunell: If you had to make a prediction: what will the Bitcoin ecosystem look like in terms of adoption in five and ten years? How do you think it will evolve?
Amy Oldenburg:
I think growth will continue. By 2030, I believe we'll see sustained, moderate adoption growth. I don't think we'll see a magic J-curve that suddenly takes off in 2027. More likely, it will be similar to what we've experienced before: more participants come in, they get educated, they gradually understand, and then prices rise, and we slowly climb up like that.
Perhaps I've experienced too much and am too realistic to make wild predictions. Bitcoin reaching a million dollars, that's great, I don't see anything impossible about it. Based on everything I've seen in my life, I believe anything is possible. But I also think that anything that extreme takes time, because if something that extreme happens, it usually means something else extreme is about to happen.
Therefore, I think a moderate upward trend would be good; we want asset stability. One of the criticisms of Bitcoin is its volatility, so I hope it can be more stable in the future, even if volatility still exists, but preferably more range-bound.
What more should people know about Bitcoin?
Host Natalie Brunell: Returning to the education gap, what kind of understanding do you hope more people, including Morgan Stanley's clients, will have about Bitcoin? What do they currently misunderstand or not understand?
Amy Oldenburg:
As I said in Vegas, I think the biggest misconception is that when a series of crypto assets emerged— Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP—everyone thought, "They're just crypto assets, they're all the same." But they're not the same; they're very different. Each has its own characteristics. I think we should spend more time discussing these differences in the future—but right now, it feels like the narrative has shrunk to "they're just crypto assets," especially with the launch of more centralized platforms. You've certainly done a good job of differentiating the focus, focusing on Bitcoin, but I do think we need to spend more time discussing these differences.
Winner-takes-all technology and redundant finance: the future of the industry
Host Natalie Brunell: I think there are also problems within the industry itself, too much infighting and backstabbing within the circle.
Amy Oldenburg:
I often think about why things happen in a certain way, from user experience, brand psychology, and in the technology field as a whole. Going back to my early experience in the tech industry, there was a "winner-takes-all" mentality in the tech world.
Think about Nvidia. I can't remember when it was founded, but when I was on the emerging markets team, we invested in Nvidia. At the time, we were investing in it as a gaming investment because we were focusing on the Asian gaming theme. Nvidia was making GPUs then, and our experience during that period was quite painful; there weren't many positive results for many years. Now you hear Jensen Huang reminiscing about those difficult times in various speeches, talking about how they were on the verge of bankruptcy several times in their early days. The market simply didn't buy into their ideas back then. As a company that went public too early, they endured an extremely long and dark period of hardship.
That "winner-takes-all" culture, which you can see in the tech industry and many technology-related fields, is completely incompatible with financial services. The essence of financial services is redundancy and numerous participants. Look at investment banks; for every IPO, many banks compete with each other, but they're all on the same offering. In the asset management industry, no single asset management company has a market share exceeding 3%, making it extremely fragmented. Even with the "too big to fail" aura of super giants, while economies of scale certainly exist, the industry as a whole remains highly competitive.
In wealth management, we are indeed the largest in the US, but the second largest is 30% smaller than us. Globally, it's extremely fragmented, both in Europe and Asia. Each country has its own structure and understanding of wealth management, which may be done through insurance companies or depend on the savings incentive mechanisms in each region.
These two cultures—numerous participants and redundancy with winner-takes-all—are difficult to reconcile. We constantly find that when searching for technology providers to support our business, often only one can truly deliver. In our RFP process, we typically start with a list of a dozen or so, narrow it down to five final candidates, then three, and then hope you can still pick the real winner from those three—hopefully all three are good choices. But technology often doesn't work that way; sometimes only one, or at most two, can meet your non-negotiable, hard requirements.
Host Natalie Brunell: So what do you think is the reason for this lack of "biodiversity"?
Amy Oldenburg:
I think this is determined by the environment. The environment for financial services isn't supported by VCs; we exist, maintain ourselves, and survive through our own revenue. Technology, on the other hand, often relies on an investor base that's constantly fighting for survival . I remember having dinner with a serial entrepreneur from San Francisco, about 20 years ago. He had already sold one company and was building a second, which was very successful. As I listened, I kept thinking: What's this thing's revenue model? I couldn't figure it out at all. So I couldn't help but ask, "So what's your revenue model?" He was very shocked. "What do you mean, a revenue model? Don't you understand? I'm building a network; it's about network effects, not revenue."
Responding to public skepticism towards large banks
Host Natalie Brunell: There's a segment of my audience who instantly become rebellious whenever I mention institutions, ETFs, or these financial products. Bitcoin has a cypherpunk spirit—it was designed for disintermediation, eliminating counterparty risk; it's the people's currency. What would someone who's spent over two decades in a large banking institution want to say to those who oppose institutional involvement in Bitcoin and are fundamentally skeptical of everything you've done?
Amy Oldenburg:
I completely understand, and on many levels, I feel it deeply. I've spent most of my career in emerging markets, where the public's distrust of the traditional official financial system isn't some abstract theory in textbooks, but a stark reality that bleeds every day. This is definitely not some "Oh, that was twenty years ago, I vaguely remember it"—look at Russia, look at Ukraine, those friends and colleagues we once traded with, their assets frozen overnight, some even completely lost, in traditional banks. To protect their life savings, to safely relocate their families to another country, they have to rack their brains to find a way to survive.
We have witnessed our friends' companies go bankrupt and their assets wiped out in a sudden and unexpected turn of events. This is not something that happened 20 years ago, nor is it the same as the Lehman Brothers crisis; this is the stark reality unfolding right now (in 2026).
Therefore, deep down, I actually live in two completely opposite worlds simultaneously. On the one hand, I feel extremely distressed by the numerous bad apples and egregious collapses that have emerged in this industry over the past few years—because these centralized scams have scared away countless people who yearn for wealth sovereignty, severely hindering the spread of global consensus. But on the other hand, the cypherpunk ideals and philosophy have immense value.
We need tools to continue scaling and to enable interaction, but those tools haven't truly arrived. What has arrived are highly centralized, very user-friendly tools that look exactly like everything consumers are already accustomed to. I'm not trying to be nitpicky, but the user experience is just terrible; it's improved somewhat, but it's still not evolving enough.
One thing that really opened my eyes was when we launched ETPs, and last September the SEC approved the transfer of physical Bitcoin to ETPs. From the perspective of a die-hard Bitcoin believer, taking physical Bitcoin and putting it into an ETP of a traditional financial institution is heresy in the eyes of many, but it is happening on a scale I never expected.
Why is this? Because people genuinely need more services. Many people have not only built wealth but also continue to believe in this entire philosophy, yet you still need to live your life and manage various life events, whether it's borrowing, buying property, sending money, or ensuring your estate can be passed on to the next generation. Some people have tried to build these services, and some have succeeded—I'm not saying there's nothing out there; some tools have been built very successfully. But sometimes, simply handing it over to a centralized institution is simpler. From a security perspective, I'm afraid; from an estate management perspective, I'm also afraid.
We can now offer capital market services around this. For example, if you transfer Bitcoin to a Bitcoin ETP, you can put it on our wealth management platform. You'll then be considered a wealth management client, and depending on the amount transferred, you might be considered a high-net-worth client. We can provide financing up to 50% of the ETP's value, meaning you can borrow up to 50% of the Bitcoin ETP's value and have the liquidity to do other things. We've already seen clients exploring this model, and we can offer services they can use for other transactions in their lives. In terms of estate management, putting it on a wealth platform is indeed more convenient than self-management.
But it's still within an ETP. Some people tell me, "I have Bitcoin exposure, so if something goes wrong, I have Bitcoin." I say, "No, you don't have Bitcoin." What you hold is a share of a Bitcoin ETP, which provides you with price exposure to Bitcoin . So I think education is multi-layered: First, what is Bitcoin? Second, do you know the difference between holding spot Bitcoin and holding an ETP? Third, do you know the difference between self-custody Bitcoin and keeping it on a centralized platform? Anyone who had exposure during the FTX period and kept assets on centralized exchanges experienced those weeks when we didn't know which platforms were affected. If your assets weren't self-custodied, you might have quickly moved to self-custody just to protect yourself from the platforms that were collapsing.
Host Natalie Brunell: What you're saying is absolutely right. On one hand, these more traditional financial instruments do unlock liquidity; people want to use them for down payments, or borrow against Bitcoin for important life events. But what fascinates me is the option. This is the first time ever that you can keep it to yourself, keep it in your head, and in the worst-case scenario, you can escape to another place. As U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis said in the Senate: It gives you a freedom and a human rights tool that nothing else offers. However, if you want to accept counterparty risk, you can also hold it in a more traditional way.
Amy Oldenburg:
This is also my response to that question from the cypherpunk era: the ideology itself is sound, and they should continue doing it. I hope those people continue, and I hope that part of it endures. At this year's Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas, I noticed a difference in atmosphere compared to Wynwood, Miami in 2021. That deep exchange of ideas about self-sovereignty was less prevalent this year. Perhaps it's just the evolution of the conference itself, perhaps it's the emergence of more centralized platforms, or perhaps it's the presence of people like myself from Morgan Stanley. But I don't want to lose that spirit, because it's a very important part of the ecosystem.
Host Natalie Brunell: I think Bitcoiners appreciate it when people in suits also stand up for self-determination and sovereignty. So maybe we can have the best of both worlds. Amy, before we wrap this up, is there anything you'd like to say, or anything we haven't covered that you'd like to add?
Amy Oldenburg:
We're still in the early stages. It's a bit of a shame to see the "will quantum computing end everything?" debate between quantum computing and Bitcoin, and to see us still arguing about some very passive products. But I truly believe it's a long journey, and there's much more to come when we talk about Bitcoin credit or other more advanced products. We have new types of technology—agentic AI, all sorts of evolving agents—maybe we'll each have our own agents in the future, maybe micropayments—all of these will continue to shape what the future environment will look like. So I think digital assets are a long road ahead, and I'm very excited to be taking the next leg of my career in this area because I feel we'll be doing this for quite some time.
