Morgan Stanley is quietly undercutting the crypto incumbents — and Bitcoin skeptics shouldn’t panic, at least according to Strike’s CEO.
What happened
- Morgan Stanley has started a crypto trading pilot through its E*Trade platform, charging clients 50 basis points (0.5%) per transaction — a rate below the standard retail fees charged by major U.S. crypto and brokerage platforms.
- The move is one of the clearest signals yet that traditional financial institutions are moving further into digital assets.
Why Strike’s Jack Mallers isn’t bothered
- Jack Mallers, CEO of Bitcoin-native payments firm Strike, told the What Bitcoin Did podcast that Wall Street’s entry isn’t a threat to Bitcoin’s core promise. “If Wall Street getting into Bitcoin kills it, it was never going to be successful in the first place,” he said.
- Mallers argues Bitcoin was designed as money for everyone, not just a politically aligned subgroup. An open network, he says, must be open even to rivals like Wall Street.
- He also framed institutional adoption as inevitable: Bitcoin is competing for global capital, and greater adoption could mean traditional stores of value (real estate, art, government debt) lose ground relative to Bitcoin.
Market context
- Spot Bitcoin ETFs that launched in the U.S. in January 2024 have already drawn nearly $60 billion in net inflows across 11 funds, according to Farside — a sign of substantial institutional and retail demand.
The counterpoint
- Not everyone in the Bitcoin community is relaxed. Critics warn that concentrated institutional ownership creates a different kind of risk: power to influence protocol direction.
- Venture capitalist Nic Carter warned in February that large institutional holders could eventually get frustrated with developers over unresolved technical challenges (he cited threats like quantum computing) and attempt to replace the current developer cohort. “I think the big institutions that now exist in Bitcoin, they will get fed up, and they will fire the devs and put in new devs,” he said.
Bottom line
- Morgan Stanley’s lower-fee pilot shows incumbents are getting serious about crypto trading. That trend cuts both ways: it brings liquidity, capital, and mainstream access — and it raises governance and concentration questions that the Bitcoin community continues to debate.
- Watch for fee competition, ETF flows, and how governance tensions play out as traditional finance and crypto further intersect.
Sources: Morgan Stanley/E*Trade pilot announcement coverage, What Bitcoin Did podcast (Jack Mallers), Farside ETF inflow data, comments from Nic Carter. Featured image: Pexels; chart: TradingView.
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