MSBT ETF added 206.4 BTC

Morgan Stanley’s new Bitcoin exchange-traded fund added 206.4 bitcoin on its second trading day, bringing its reported holdings to 650.8 bitcoin. (x.com) The fund, Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, began trading on New York Stock Exchange Arca on April 8 under the ticker MSBT. Its prospectus says the product is designed to track bitcoin’s price and is listed on New York Stock Exchange Arca. (sec.gov) Morgan Stanley set MSBT’s annual delegated sponsor fee at 0.14%, according to reporting tied to the latest filing. That undercuts BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, which was charging 0.25%, and put Morgan Stanley at the low end of the United States spot-bitcoin exchange-traded fund market at launch. (finance.yahoo.com) (msn.com) A spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund is a stock-market wrapper that holds bitcoin directly, so investors can buy shares in a brokerage account instead of handling wallets and private keys. Morgan Stanley’s prospectus says MSBT is a passive vehicle that holds bitcoin and seeks to track the CoinDesk Bitcoin Benchmark 4 p.m. New York settlement rate. (sec.gov) The filing says Bank of New York Mellon and Coinbase Custody Trust Company are the bitcoin custodians for the trust. The same prospectus says the fund will not use leverage or derivatives and will value its shares daily against the benchmark. (sec.gov) Morgan Stanley’s entry adds a bank-branded product to a market that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission opened in January 2024, when it approved the first batch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Those approvals let firms including BlackRock, Fidelity and others compete for flows with near-identical bitcoin exposure and different fee structures. (sec.gov) The launch also extends Morgan Stanley’s crypto push from distribution into manufacturing. Bloomberg reported on April 8 that Morgan Stanley was set to become the first Wall Street bank to launch its own Bitcoin-tracking exchange-traded fund. (bloomberg.com) The reported day-two addition of 206.4 bitcoin came from a social-media post rather than a fund filing, so the figure should be treated as provisional until Morgan Stanley or an official holdings report confirms it. The broader outline — April 8 launch, New York Stock Exchange Arca listing, bitcoin-tracking mandate and 0.14% fee — is documented in securities filings and contemporaneous reporting. (x.com) (sec.gov)