Organized & Compiled: Deep Tide TechFlow

Guest: Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Morgan Stanley

Host: Natalie Brunell

Podcast Source: Natalie Brunell

Original Title: When Will Bitcoin Hit a New ATH? Wall Street Insider Explains

Air Date: June 10, 2026

Summary of Key Points

Morgan Stanley manages trillions of dollars in assets and is now presenting Bitcoin to its clients—its Head of Digital Asset Strategy, Amy Oldenburg, highlights a stark contrast in this discussion: MSBT has set a record for the first day issuance of ETFs at the firm, yet most financial advisors remain hesitant to recommend it to clients, as Bitcoin's price has largely stagnated since its recommendation. She does not believe that the next significant surge will come from a new product or favorable policy, but may instead require a true event shattering the traditional financial system as a catalyst, and she would not be surprised if Bitcoin surpasses a million dollars in five years, just hoping that the rise happens slowly.

Highlights of Insights

Technological Roots: From the 1999 Tech Bubble to Emerging Markets

• "Every stage of my growth has been accompanied by some technological transformation that seemed extremely obscure at the time and even faced widespread skepticism, and only today do I understand how the whole historical puzzle fits together."
• "The old traders and retail investors who were my counter-parties on the market stood by me through to the global financial crisis in 2008. We shared the baptism of that financial tsunami, and it was the core of this group that later became the early hardcore players purchasing Bitcoin."
• "The early evangelists and heavy users of Bitcoin came not only from the tech geek circles in Silicon Valley, but also largely from the cross-border and international financial markets—those who were looking for alternatives to the traditional centralized banking systems on the trading frontline."

Why Bitcoin Made Sense Early On

• "In those underdeveloped markets, traditional brick-and-mortar banking systems are extremely lagging, and the vast majority of the populace can never open a bank account, so they can only fully rely on and embrace mobile money."
• "You find yourself in a remote village lacking even 24-hour power supply, full of dirt roads, yet there stands a small Vodafone kiosk that resembles a lemonade stand, with 'M-Pesa' written on it—that's where you turn cash into digital currency."
• "Having worked extensively in many emerging markets, I know very well that there, people have ample reasons to embrace decentralization—the traditional financial infrastructure is extremely unreliable, devoid of a spirit of contract, and often accompanied by severe systemic corruption, which we witnessed firsthand on the trading desks back then."

Why Institutional Investors Have Not Fully Embraced Bitcoin?

• "Our group is legally structured as a bank holding company. This means we must adhere to a set of far stricter capital adequacy and risk control requirements that belong entirely to the banking system—because looming over us is the towering presence of the Federal Reserve."

Record Demand for MSBT

• "Of course, you will cheer for your product, but until it actually goes live, you really have no idea what will happen. The results surprised many."
• "Combining GSIB-level issuance with GSIB-level custodianship is not only our first goal to push to market but also what we want to use to understand what else the entire ecosystem needs to develop."

Will Morgan Stanley Issue Digital Credit?

• "I know there is something in digital credit—but most people have not even grasped Bitcoin, let alone more advanced products."
• "Education is the reason why the community and financial advisor groups are restricted from accessing these products."
• "Some elements of these products are very attractive, but there is always something that keeps it from being complete—it’s somewhat like the early story of BlackBerry."

The Advisory Gap: Why Not Everyone Recommends Bitcoin?

• "If we had recommended at $10,000 or $15,000, and it then rose to $100,000, the momentum would naturally be behind us—but interestingly, we have mostly been in a range since the recommendation."
• "Financial advisors have a fiduciary duty to select suitable assets for their current clients. Not every client is a growth-oriented investor."

What Are the Reasons Holding Back the Development of Bitcoin?

• "We always get stuck in the black-and-white debate: will Bitcoin ultimately succeed or fail? But we live in a very complex world where various narratives are intertwined, dispersing focus and allocation."
• "Global mainstream capital's focus and liquidity in asset allocation have been brutally segmented."
• "I hate to say this, but it may really require a crisis—we shattered the existing system, and Bitcoin is the only thing that remains intact."

Corporate Balance Sheet

• "Banks do not hold Bitcoin not because they dislike it, but because there are more efficient asset choices—if capital regulation conditions do not improve, we will focus our efforts on those more advantageous assets."
• "If no one really needs tokenized stocks, we have no reason to spend too much money on it—when demand arises, we will do it. The same logic applies to Bitcoin."

The Future of Bitcoin

• "I do not think we will see a magical J-curve that suddenly takes off in 2027. The more likely scenario is that we continue to slowly climb, with more participants gradually entering, getting educated, and slowly understanding."
• "If Bitcoin reaches a million dollars, that’s great; I don’t see anything impossible about that. From everything I've seen in my life, I believe anything is possible."

Winners Take All Technology and Redundant Finance: The Future of the Industry

• "That 'winner takes all' culture can be seen in tech and many tech-related fields, which is completely incompatible with financial services, where the essence is redundancy and many participants."
• "When we do RFPs, we start with more than ten and hope to have three contenders left—but in technology, often only one or at most two meet our non-negotiable hard requirements."

Addressing People’s Doubts About Large Banks

• "In emerging markets, the local populace'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 hardcore Bitcoin believer, bringing spot Bitcoin into an ETP of a traditional financial institution is seen as heresy by many, but it is happening at a scale I did not anticipate."
• "Holding an ETP share does not equate to holding Bitcoin—you have price exposure. This needs to be repeatedly educated."

Technological Roots: From the 1999 Tech Bubble to Emerging Markets

Host Natalie Brunell: Today's guest is Amy Oldenburg, the Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Morgan Stanley. Amy, I particularly want to hear your story about how you got involved with Bitcoin, as well as your legendary experience over more than twenty years at Morgan Stanley.

Amy Oldenburg:

I have been at Morgan Stanley for twenty-six years, although that was not originally my plan. I grew up in a small Midwestern town in Ohio. Interestingly—just like you asked me in your pre-show chat, "How did you get to where you are today? How did you embark on this crazy journey of digital assets and Bitcoin?"

Like you, I'm a deep Generation X, and I can resonate with your experiences. Sometimes I see those jokes online about how kids from the 80s and 90s grew up—I look back and think, technology really started to reshape our lives at a very early stage. I remember when I was seven or eight years old, my cousins and I would crawl in the basement playing Atari, and then the Nintendo Entertainment System came out, with Super Mario Bros making us go crazy. It feels like every pivotal moment in my life has coincided with some disruptive wave of technology.

One Christmas, my dad bought us a Tandy computer, and we started tinkering with some of the earliest computer games—I was astounded at the time. Then technology continued to accelerate. In high school, we learned the basics of typing in the computer lab, and by college, technology began to deeper integrate into our daily lives.

I remember a professor who got into the beta test for BlackBerry, and our entire marketing class became seed users of BlackBerry. At that time, we sat in class and couldn't think of what this thing could be used for—because it didn’t even have an app, it was just a piece of hardware. We were complaining, "Well, what’s the difference between this and a pager from high school? It can send letters and numbers, but who among our friends has this thing? We're just sending it to ghosts?" Later, it evolved into a version with the iconic full keyboard, and it became exaggeratedly popular, only to be suddenly eliminated by time—it’s true.

The funnier part is the major I was studying in school. I was majoring in accounting, but the school rules stated that accounting majors couldn't study abroad. At that time, I just wanted to escape Ohio as far as possible, even willing to be sent across the ocean to the international market. Since I couldn't go abroad, the second-best option was a domestic exchange program the school had 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 the middle of the most fervent internet tech bubble (Dot-com Bubble).

I was young then and had no idea how insane the world I was entering was. The day after I arrived in Silicon Valley, I joined a startup that primarily helped Fortune 500 companies build websites. After two months of paid internship, I decisively dropped my accounting major and didn't even keep it as my minor. The feeling at the time was so intense—the technological revolution that was unfolding was absolutely poised to profoundly disrupt the future.

At that time, we followed the company to various industry summits. Google was still just a small car milkshake at the time, they could only hand out a tiny piece of paper to recruit people that said, "If you’re interested, please visit our Craigslist page to apply for a job at Google." We raised our eyebrows at the time: "Google? What a silly name! This business model makes no sense—who would use it to search for things? Impossible to be successful."

So you see, every stage of my life has come with some technology transformation that, at the time, seemed extremely obscure and faced enormous skepticism—only today do I finally see clearly how the historical puzzle fits together.

As for how I later entered the field of digital assets and Bitcoin—I actually transitioned to Morgan Stanley after the internet bubble burst. I stayed at that startup in San Francisco during the bubble burst before being brought back to the New York headquarters for a full-time position. At that time, everyone was well aware that the environment had completely collapsed—we were even forced to withdraw our S-1 application and failed to go public, followed by two rounds of brutal layoffs within the company. At that point, I had to launch Plan B immediately because I needed to pay rent—I would absolutely not return to Ohio.

It was at that critical juncture that I inadvertently entered Morgan Stanley. A good friend of mine worked in Morgan Stanley's Human Resources department, and she came to me saying, "I know you’re not interested in traditional finance right now and are focused entirely on technology. But I have a lot of positions that urgently need to be filled. If you know anyone looking for a job or wanting to interview, please send them my way." I thought to myself, why not give it a try for myself, at least keep a back door open.

And so, I crossed over into Morgan Stanley's emerging markets team. At that time, the aftershocks of the Asian Financial Crisis (1997) had not yet dissipated, and the tequila crisis in Mexico (1994) had also just passed—entire emerging markets were in disarray. The team I joined saw several leadership changes within just a few years. At the same time, we were clearly bearing the brunt of the tech bubble burst's severe impact on financial assets—this was around 2000, 2001. Even more dramatically, nine months after I joined, the 9/11 incident occurred. Those days were nothing but a crisis after another, while the underlying technological transformation was simultaneously ramping up.

During my time at Morgan Stanley, I spent several years at the trading desk, specializing in programmatic trading and FX trading in emerging markets. The old traders and retail investors who were my daily counter-parties on the market stayed with me through to the global financial crisis in 2008. We experienced the baptism of that financial tsunami together, and it was this core group that later became the early hardcore players purchasing Bitcoin.

The earliest evangelists and heavy users of Bitcoin came not just from the tech geek circles in Silicon Valley, but largely from cross-border and international financial markets—those who were desperately seeking alternatives to the traditional centralized banking systems at the trading frontline.

Having worked extensively in many emerging markets, I know very well that there, people have ample reasons to embrace decentralization—the traditional financial infrastructure is extremely unreliable, devoid of a spirit of contract, and often accompanied by severe systemic corruption, which we witnessed firsthand on the trading desks back then.

So, it was through these experiences on the trading frontline, coupled with the contacts I built in the tech circle in my early years (like friends who were early on peer-to-peer music file-sharing software/P2P software), that I was very sensitively exposed to Bitcoin at an early stage. Those digital trading and risk management capabilities I had also smoothly transitioned into the digital asset realm later on.

Why Bitcoin Made Sense Early On

Host Natalie Brunell: Since you encountered this space so early, did you invest early on yourself, or did you choose to hold back until traditional financial institutions entered the scene and the entire industry became compliant before you started building your position?

Amy Oldenburg:

Actually, I didn't. It's amusing to say, my brother came to visit me last week, and we were reminiscing—about 2012 or so, he excitedly came to me saying that he wanted to get a few machines to mine Bitcoin. I directly laughed at him and said we didn’t have hardware powerful enough to build a mining rig.

Moreover, you need to understand, the environment back then in the crypto space was a knife-edge, extremely dangerous—not at all like 오늘, where you simply download a sleek and elegant Coinbase App and can safely deposit and withdraw Bitcoin with a few clicks on the browser. To be honest, back then, if you wanted to buy coins, your only option was to deal with decentralized setups like Mt.Gox. And at that time, working at Morgan Stanley, I was thinking, if I dared to touch this thing, I would probably get fired the next day. For me then, compliance risk and operational costs were simply too high. So, despite having kept a close eye and spending a massive amount of time watching this evolution, I was absolutely not one of those hardcore miners sitting in front of the computer coding and mining from the very beginning.

Host Natalie Brunell: Let's widen the perspective a bit—looking back at your deep investment experience in emerging markets, is there a core conclusion that can directly correlate with Bitcoin's strong rise later on? Is there a lesson from emerging markets that made you wake up and think, "Oh! This is where the rationale for Bitcoin lies!"?

Amy Oldenburg:

Yes, and this intuition is extremely strong. Going back to 2007, just before the global financial crisis exploded. I think those focusing on fintech today should have heard of M-Pesa (the Kenyan mobile wallet benchmark) and the savage growth of mobile payments in Africa and other emerging markets. But few know that our Morgan Stanley team deeply engaged and invested in its parent company Safaricom’s IPO around 2006 and 2007.

At that time, on the front lines of East Africa, we witnessed digital currency and mobile payment infrastructure sweep across that land at a spine-chilling speed—the explosiveness was truly mind-bending. Westerners living in America could not resonate with such change at the time because our card systems were too mature; Americans did not face the pain points that the common people in Africa did. Even more absurdly, the people of Africa were using the most antique non-smart flip phones to run this entire set of digital financial processes—this was not even the era of smartphones.

In those underdeveloped markets, traditional brick-and-mortar banking systems are extremely lagging and the vast majority of the populace can never open a bank account, so they can only fully rely on and embrace mobile money.

Later, I spent some time in Tanzania. When you walk in those most remote, primitive villages, lacking even major roads properly paved and unable to supply electricity for 24 hours, you might suddenly see a tiny yellow Vodafone kiosk standing by the road. The kiosk is as simple as a lemonade stand made by the children in the village, yet it has the striking four characters: M-Pesa.

That's where the local villagers can recharge their cash into digital assets on their phones. When you physically stand there, witnessing how deep this decentralized digital infrastructure penetrates into the society, seeing these financially marginalized groups view it as their only choice to change their fate, and the real sense of security it brings to these ordinary people, the shock to the soul is beyond words.

You can try to empathize with that scene: those African women who go daily to the market to sell vegetables, bread, or set up stalls to make a living. In the past, when they packed up and returned home, walking through the dark path back to their village, they were loaded with heavy cash earned that day. In a local environment with chaotic security, that was like carrying a ticking time bomb.

But since the advent of mobile digital currency, they can immediately deposit their cash into the digital outlet by the roadside, turning it into a string of encrypted digits on their phones or digital cards. When they walk home empty-handed in the dark, they eliminate the risk of being violently robbed at any moment, in exchange for a level of technological security they have never experienced in a traditional financial society.

Do you realize? This underlying concept woven into finance, assets, and life security is completely on a different channel from the ordinary Western investors or Wall Street bankers sitting in offices in Chicago or New York, living sterile lives. And this, exactly, is the core underpinning of Bitcoin's early value logic.

Morgan Stanley Spot Bitcoin ETF

Host Natalie Brunell: So, what exactly catalyzed Morgan Stanley to publicly step forward—not only to officially express support for Bitcoin but even to launch spot Bitcoin-related products (such as spot Bitcoin ETP/ETF access and distribution) directly to the market?

Amy Oldenburg:

The root lies in "customer-driven." At Morgan Stanley, one of our highest core principles that the entire company relies on to survive and operate daily is customer-driven. Customers are expressing a strong demand continuously, and as the service provider, we naturally need to respond to the market.

Of course, limited by the industry's specific compliance framework, what we can do varies at different stages due to regulatory constraints. But as the regulatory environment continues to loosen and evolve—even if we look at our ETRADE business—I think before answering this question, it’s necessary to quickly outline Morgan Stanley's vast business landscape.

We have several different business units: Institutional Securities—which is generally understood as investment banking, sales trading, and research; then there’s the Wealth Management sector—of which there are sub-divisions, including financial advisors, which we will talk about later. We’ve also made a series of major acquisitions, one of which is ETRADE—a self-directed online trading platform that brought us in front of a completely different client demographic through this technology platform. And then there's our Asset Management division—that's the product manufacturing department, from corporate pensions to sovereign wealth funds to mutual funds and ETFs.

These products not only distribute through our wealth platforms—that's just one channel—but also distribute globally through relationships with other intermediaries and banks. Having such a diverse set of businesses and being able to mobilize multiple departments simultaneously is very exciting.

Speaking of Bitcoin exposure, we have Bitcoin ETPs, coming from our Asset Management division. Then there’s spot trading, which we are gradually rolling out on ETRADE, allowing you to purchase spot Bitcoin directly on ETRADE.

Why Institutional Investors Have Not Fully Embraced Bitcoin?

Host Natalie Brunell: I understand that institutions as large as Morgan Stanley need to navigate through numerous hurdles—compliance and legal. Can you share the inside story as to why it has taken so long? On one hand, optimistic people might say, "It’s only been sixteen years; Bitcoin breaking into mainstream institutions like Morgan Stanley is already a miracle." But on the other hand, radical believers would question, "Since the opportunity is here, why aren’t mainstream institutions willing to stake their entire existence and fully invest in Bitcoin?"

Amy Oldenburg:

There are different aspects to consider. First, the outside world often underestimates the extremely stringent systemic regulatory constraints placed on us. Here, it's crucial to clarify the concept—our fundamental structure at Morgan Stanley is essentially different from BlackRock.

BlackRock is a purely independent asset management company, whereas Morgan Stanley, although it has a massive asset management business, is legally structured as a bank holding company. This means Morgan Stanley must adhere to a set of much stricter capital adequacy and risk control requirements that belong entirely to the banking system—because we have the Federal Reserve towering above us.

This is one reason why we could not early on flexibly roll out such front-running crypto products like those independent asset management peers at BlackRock. You can imagine, when the front-line technology was making big leaps, and we were watching our peers rush to release crypto products, how frustrated and helpless we felt sitting in the office—everyone could only stare at each other, countless times internally screaming, "Why can’t we do this?"

Another interesting point: we had actually crafted a plan a few years ago to launch spot crypto business on E*TRADE. Unfortunately, during 2020 and 2021, many suppliers we did due diligence on, evaluated, and even shortlisted have since ceased to exist. So when we restarted this effort in 2024, we had to completely rebuild the plan from scratch; much of what was done before was not useful anymore.

Record Demand for MSBT

Host Natalie Brunell: The issuance of MSBT set a record for the best first-day performance of an ETF in Morgan Stanley’s history. What is the actual demand you observed?

Amy Oldenburg:

As a product maker, of course, you will strive to promote it before it goes live—but to be honest, until the product truly pivots to market and starts trading, you are entirely anxious; no one knows what will actually happen.

We received a lot of feedback from Wall Street, with some saying "You have to get into this space" and others questioning "Why are you doing this? There are already around twenty Bitcoin ETPs on the market; what makes your product different?" We made every effort to differentiate—bringing institutional-grade architecture to this product. We entered the market with a 14 basis point fee, investing largely in total management fees. We also made arrangements at the custodial level, partnering with both Coinbase and BNY, being the first to collaborate with BNY on ETP custodianship in the market.

So combining GSIB-level issuance and GSIB-level custodianship is not only our first market-facing goal but also what we want to use to better understand what else the entire ecosystem needs to develop further. Because if we advance with products from here, the infrastructure, whether it's BNY, us, or other Wall Street GSIBs, has a lot of work to do to truly enter a 24/7 operational flywheel and continue advancing in this market.

Will Morgan Stanley Issue Digital Credit?

Host Natalie Brunell: Will Morgan Stanley issue innovative products like digital credit produced by Strategy?

Amy Oldenburg:

Good question. I have encountered them a few times at recent events, and we have done a lot of work with their team—we ourselves are one of the major participants in the issuance of the STRK digital credit product, so we know the underlying logic and operational mechanism of such assets very well.

Returning to the story I previously shared—I think it’s tough for people to truly see its position in the overall picture. When I chat with financial advisors, some understand it very well, but a significant portion has not even grasped Bitcoin, let alone more advanced products, so there’s a lot of educational work that still needs to be done. Moreover, these products have some features; they don't fit into traditional categories with labels investors are used to; they look different and behave differently, so how do we help people understand it?

Today, I also asked a colleague who has participated in all the ETP issuances, "What do you think limits the community and financial advisors from accessing these products—whether ETPs, STRK, or others?" She directly said, "100% is education."

Some elements of these products are extremely attractive, but there is always something that keeps it from being complete, much like the BlackBerry story. I know there is something within it, but it just hasn’t perfectly clicked together yet. However, I believe it will eventually come, it just needs more time.

The Advisory Gap: Why Not Everyone Recommends Bitcoin?

Host Natalie Brunell: You just mentioned financial advisors. To my understanding, Morgan Stanley has currently released an official strategy allowing a Bitcoin tactical allocation ratio of 2% to 4%. But as you mentioned, the adoption and recommendation speed on the financial advisor side are far behind the fervent demand from front-end clients.

Amy Oldenburg:

That's a great question; we are trying to understand the psychological factors behind this, which are as important as the financial aspects. Our recommendation targets moderately aggressive portfolios, not every client, but those that fit the risk tolerance.

From macro data, even though we’ve recently seen global inflation rising, Bitcoin's price has actually declined. Its actual performance in the market still closely follows high-risk assets like stocks. To be honest, from my personal asset management intuition, I really wish it could break free soon and behave more like gold, which genuinely possesses inflation-hedging properties across cycles. So, this operational disparity between "theoretically digital gold" and "real high-risk assets" has left countless clients and financial advisors extremely confused.

That said, Morgan Stanley's official allocation recommendations are indeed clearly laid out—some balanced portfolios have 0% to 2%, while some more aggressive growth portfolios are positioned between 2% to 4%. But it's extremely subtle that since we opened up these allocation recommendations, Bitcoin's market has actually been long-term stagnating in a range.

If Morgan Stanley had made its official recommendation at the super low of $10,000 or $15,000 and it then skyrocketed to $100,000, the intense profit-making effect and market momentum would naturally push all advisors forward. However, interestingly, since the recommendation, we have remained mostly within a range, which has made people more hesitant about its trajectory, and the psychological battle is quite tough.

Particularly as we also face other asset classes; private credit has been hot for years, and the rapidly rising valuations in the AI sector have left everyone dazzled and confused. When you are managing these relationships for clients, remember: not every client is a growth-oriented investor. Financial advisors have a fiduciary duty to find suitable assets for their current clients. Many of our clients with significant wealth are very fond of innovative things and actively request them; others prefer to keep their assets in more reliable options, focusing on stable returns and capital preservation.

What Are the Reasons Holding Back the Development of Bitcoin?

Host Natalie Brunell: I’ve heard it said that "Bitcoin basically made a round trip since its peak in 2021." I can understand that. Of course, you need to widen your perspective and look at the time frame, but what do you think is holding Bitcoin back? We've reached 2026, so many institutions and banks are now in the game, what do you think is dragging Bitcoin down?

Amy Oldenburg:

There is absolutely not just one single factor at play here. We tend to get caught in that black-and-white debate: is Bitcoin headed towards ultimate success or will it fail to zero? Is it digital gold or a bubble? But the reality is, we live in a game world with extremely complex underlying logic. Recently, indeed, there was a bullish momentum with many mainstream financial new products being launched that greatly expanded its global distribution channels. But don’t forget that just last year, traditional financial markets experienced an extremely frenetic gold and silver super-cycle, with commodity trading very hot. At one point, a fellow colleague of mine candidly told me, "We’ve already pulled our attention away from crypto assets; everyone in the investment bank has run off to do commodity day trading instead." You see, the attention and liquidity of global mainstream capital in asset allocation were brutally sliced up.

Host Natalie Brunell: What do you think could be the catalyst to kickstart Bitcoin afresh and correspond more with what many Bitcoiners deem it as, a neutral reserve asset?

Amy Oldenburg:

I think it needs time. I hate to say that, perhaps because I have lived through the global financial crisis, the tech crisis, 9/11, and even the pandemic. Crisis events can drastically shift our way of thinking, and sometimes we may never return to old ways of thinking. I don’t like to say it might require a crisis; sometimes I think it could be a "slowly grinded crisis," less dramatic, not as intense as the pandemic or the global financial crisis, but I’m not certain. Perhaps it truly requires such events: we shattered the existing system, and Bitcoin is the only thing that remains intact.

For me, the evolution of digital asset activities is also very interesting. Since my journey started more from the Bitcoin side, I believe fiercely in decentralization, particularly from an emerging market perspective—even when electricity is down, or the whole country collapses, you’re still fine because the ecosystem and blockchain would be supported by proponents from other parts of the world. But now we are building so many digital assets in a very centralized manner. So I don't know, maybe it will take something to go wrong before people will return to discussions about decentralization.

Last week, I spoke at an event about the concept of agentic; we may one day circle back to truly recognizing the value of proof-of-work: when our inboxes are destroyed by AI agents, filled with junk, fakes, and completely indistinguishable from real, we might realize that much of Bitcoin technology was early aimed at solving the junk mail issue in inboxes. We may truly need to step back and say, “This is extremely necessary.” My inbox is being destroyed by things from agents, and how can I validate whether a transaction is real or fake?

Corporate Balance Sheet

Host Natalie Brunell: Many projects and tokens are nominally decentralized but are, in reality, highly centralized and largely speculative. What conditions must be met for American banks to start holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets?

Amy Oldenburg:

Avoiding bearing such a heavy burden from capital management, this is certain. Moreover, I think banks are not reluctant to do this, nor do they dislike Bitcoin, but we also need to conduct business. If there are more efficient asset options from perspectives of capital processing or regulation, we will naturally prioritize doing those. This is not an anti-Bitcoin stance but requires an environment that can support the use of such assets concerning collateral and in transactions and ecosystems.

Not limited to Bitcoin, even today we are discussing the topics of tokenization and tokenized stocks in our meetings. Of course, everyone is buzzing about tokenization once again. But if no one truly needs tokenized stocks, we have no motivation to spend so much on them. We can certainly prepare and provide support, but at the end of the day, if traditional assets are where the borrowing demand lies, we can do traditional securities lending and offer services surrounding traditional clients. If demand arises for tokenized assets, we will likewise respond.

The same logic applies to Bitcoin. If we can use these assets in the same way and as collateral without increasing the burden on the balance sheet, we would be more motivated to invest more time on this path.

The Future of Bitcoin

Host Natalie Brunell: If you had to make a prediction about the Bitcoin ecosystem in terms of adoption in five or ten years, how do you think it will evolve?

Amy Oldenburg:

I think it will continue to grow. By 2030, I believe we will see sustained, moderate growth in adoption. I don’t expect to see a magical J-curve that suddenly takes off by 2027. The more likely scenario is that we continue to slowly climb, with more participants gradually coming in, getting educated, and slowly understanding, leading to a price increase, and we will just rise slowly like that.

I might be too realistic due to my experiences and hesitant to make wild predictions. If Bitcoin reaches a million dollars, that’s great; I don’t see anything impossible about that. From everything I've seen in my life, I believe anything is possible. But I also think that any extreme occurrences will take time, because if such an extreme event happens, it usually means another extreme event occurred.

So I think a moderate upward trend would be great; we want asset stability. One point often criticized about Bitcoin is its volatility, so I hope it can be more stable in the future, even if volatility still exists, but ideally more range-bound volatility.

What Should More People Know About Bitcoin?

Host Natalie Brunell: Returning to the educational gap, what do you wish more people, including Morgan Stanley clients, understood about Bitcoin? What do they currently not understand or misunderstand?

Amy Oldenburg:

I mentioned in Vegas that I think the biggest misunderstanding is that when a whole range of crypto assets emerge, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, people think "they are just crypto assets, they are all the same." But they are not the same; they are very different. Each one has its own characteristics. I think we should spend more time discussing these differences in the future—but currently, it feels like the narrative has collapsed into "they are just crypto assets," especially with more centralized platforms emerging. You have indeed been doing a good job of distinguishing the focus; you are focused on Bitcoin, but I do think we need to spend more time discussing these differences.

The Winner Takes All Technology and Redundant Finance: The Future of the Industry

Host Natalie Brunell: I feel there are issues within the industry itself, too much mutual criticism among insiders.

Amy Oldenburg:

I often wonder why things happen a certain way, from user experience, brand psychology, and the overall technology field<|disc_score|>1

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