← Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
News Block: Gold Slides as Bitcoin Holds, Morgan Stanley Files for BTC ETF, Washington Redefining Crypto Rulebook
00:09:36
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Coin Stories news block, powered exclusively by LEDN. I'm Natalie Brunel and in about 10 minutes or less, I'll provide you with insightful updates on Bitcoin, financial markets and the global economy. Everything you need to know in one block. Let's go. Bitcoin has been surging against gold in one of the most chaotic macro environments we've seen in years. The conflict in the Middle east has accelerated into a full scale war, now entering its fourth week. Oil prices have surged roughly 45% since the strikes began. Inflationary pressures are building and even traditional safe havens are showing cracks. Gold fell through the 4400 level on Sunday night and is now down more than 14% over the past month. Stocks slid more than 5% over the same period. And yet Bitcoin has found at least some temporary support around the $70,000 level. The question everyone's asking is, is there more downward pressure to come and look in uncertain times like these, all outcomes are on the table. But here's the thing. There's a strong argument to be made that Bitcoin's bear markets are likely to be less severe than we've seen in prior cycles. It's something we've talked about. The reason is simple. The investor base has fundamentally changed. Instead of just retail investors being the dominant force behind price action, which is really what drove the wild boom and bust cycles of 2017 and 2021, it's now institutional investors that are increasingly becoming the marginal buyers. And one of the biggest reasons for that shift is that access to Bitcoin has improved dramatically over the past two years with the launch of Spot Bitcoin ETFs and other Bitcoin backed securities. Coinbase Institutional and EY Parthenon just released their 2026 Institutional Investor Digital Assets Survey, which surveyed 351 institutional investors managing at least a billion dollars in assets. And the findings show that 6, 66% are now using spot Bitcoin ETFs as their primary vehicle to gain exposure to Bitcoin. And that brings us to this week's Big Story. Morgan Stanley, one of the largest and most influential financial institutions on the planet, just filed and amended S1 for its own proprietary Spot Bitcoin ETF, the ticker MSBT that makes Morgan Stanley the first major US bank to file a Spot Bitcoin ETF under its own brand. Now let me give you some context on why this is such a big deal. Morgan Stanley rarely, and I mean rarely launches ETFs under its own brand. This isn't the bank just recommending somebody else's product. This is Morgan Stanley putting its own name, its reputation and its balance sheet behind a Bitcoin etf. So they clearly see it as a massive opportunity. What's the potential impact? Well, strategy CEO Fong Li pointed out that Morgan Stanley wealth management oversees about $8 trillion in assets under management and recommends a 0 to 4% bitcoin allocation for clients. That means if just 2% gets allocated, that alone would represent $160 billion flowing into bitcoin. Fong Li called MSBT quote monster bitcoin. And speaking of strategy, the company just launched a $42 billion ATM split between 21 billion of stretch preferred and and 21 billion of MSTR equity, giving it two ongoing pipelines to raise capital and buy Bitcoin across market conditions. That's a dual channel setup designed to pull in both income seeking and equity investors and turn that demand directly into Bitcoin accumulation. So it's no surprise that we are seeing the institutional shift around Bitcoin confirmed by recent data. In that same survey I mentioned earlier From Coinbase and EY Parthenon, they found that 73% of institutions plan to increase their digital asset allocations this year and 74% expect digital asset prices to rise over the next 12 months. So when you zoom out and look at the full picture, what you're really seeing is a structural shift in who owns Bitcoin. This isn't a retail driven speculative frenzy anymore. This is institutional capital systemically allocating to Bitcoin. And that's why even with bitcoin sitting around 45% below its all time high, the floor underneath this market looks very different than it did in 2018 or 2022. And that matters because the next time Bitcoin runs, and of course it will, the buying pressure won't just come from mom and pop investors. It'll now also come from Morgan Stanley's roughly 16,000 financial advisors recommending MSBT to their clients over coffee. And that's a different market entirely. Need cash, but don't want to sell your Bitcoin? LEDN is the global leader in Bitcoin backed loans, issuing over $9 billion in loans since 2018. And they were the first to offer proof of reserves. 1. With LEDEN, you get custody loans, no credit checks, no monthly payments and more. Visit Leden IO Natalie to learn more and get a quarter percentage point off your first loan. All right, from that same Coinbase survey, do you want to guess what the number one concern Institutional investors have when it comes to investing in digital assets. Uncertain regulatory environment. Well, institutions got some good news on that front last week. Two pieces of good news, actually. First, the SEC and CFTC jointly released a 68 page guidance document that for the first time creates a formal token taxonomy classifying different types of crypto assets. The agencies declared that most cryptocurrencies, including what they're calling digital commodities, stablecoins and digital tools, are not securities. This is a massive shift under the Biden administration. Former SEC Chair Gary Gensler took the position that essentially everything was a security and the agency pursued enforcement actions against major crypto firms left and right. The industry called it regulation by enforcement. That era is officially over. SEC Chair Paul Atkins summed it up pretty well at the DC Blockchain Summit last week. He said, quote, after more than a decade of uncertainty, this interpretation will provide market participants with a clear understanding of how the Commission treats crypto assets under federal securities laws. This is what regulatory agencies are supposed to do, draw clear lines in clear terms. All right, I have to be honest about where I stand on this. While I'm all for regulatory clarity, I do have some concerns about classifying many of these tokens as commodities rather than securities. A lot of these tokens have issuers, they began very centralized and have insider heavy launches where founders and early investors enriched themselves at the expense of retail buyers. And most have been destructive to wealth over the long term. Bitcoin is obviously not like that at all. It's unique. It was the first. There was no pre mine, no insider allocation, no venture round. Bitcoin is the only one with a truly fair launch. Satoshi designed it with a programmatic issuance schedule that remains unchanged to this day, with the final Bitcoin being mined around 2140. And no other coin can rival that track record. But here's the bottom line. A classification really doesn't change the fundamentals. Bitcoin's long term value proposition remains uniquely compelling because of its monetary characteristics, its true decentralization and its security. Bitcoin doesn't need a regulatory advantage. The free market is a weighing machine over the long term. And Bitcoin will continue to separate itself from the rest of digital assets. But the second piece of regulatory news, and this one could be even more impactful, is that the crypto market structure bill is advancing in Congress faster than anyone expected. Senator Cynthia Lummis, chairwoman of the Senate Banking Committee's Digital Assets subcommittee, said this week, quote, we think we've got it. She confirmed the Banking Committee is targeting a markup in the second half of April. The bill, as you may know, is called the Clarity Act. It passed the House last July with strong bipartisan support. And the big breakthrough this week was that senators Thom Tillis and Angela also Brooks reached an agreement in principle on the stablecoin yield issue, which has been the main sticking point holding up progress. Banks had been lobbying hard against stablecoin issuers paying yield to holders, arguing it would compete directly with bank deposits. So the compromise bans passive yield, meaning you can't earn rewards just for holding a stablecoin, but allows activity based rewards tied to payments and platform usage. And whether you agree with this or not tells you something about how threatened traditional banks feel by the competition. Senator Bernie Moreno put the urgency into perspective. He said if they don't get the Clarity act passed by May, quote, digital asset legislation will not pass for the foreseeable future. And again, why does this all matter for Bitcoin? As we said, regulatory uncertainty is the single biggest barrier keeping institutional capital on the sidelines. And when that barrier starts to fade away, it doesn't just clear the path, it really opens up the floodgates. Imagine the trillions of dollars sitting in institutional portfolios right now waiting for a green light. And a market structure bill becoming law could be the catalyst that pulls Bitcoin out of this. Correction. That's it for the news block. Your weekly Bitcoin and economic news update. Powered exclusively by ledn. I'm Natalie Brunel. Make sure you're subscribed to Coin Story so you never miss an episode. This show is for educational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice. Until next time, keep stacking.