Morgan Stanley’s Amy Oldenburg mentioned a future transfer by main banks to place Bitcoin on their steadiness sheets is “not completely out of the query,” pointing to regulatory progress whereas warning that capital guidelines and world supervisory alignment nonetheless matter.
Talking throughout a Bitcoin 2026 convention panel, Oldenburg was asked what it might take for a financial institution like Morgan Stanley, or one other regulated monetary establishment, to make the leap from providing Bitcoin publicity to truly holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset.
“Bitcoin on the steadiness sheet,” she mentioned, pausing on the premise. “, I believe if we proceed to see the progress that we’ve made over the past 16 months or so in regulatory, that that’s one thing that you could be see going ahead. It’s not completely out of the query.”
Morgan Stanley And Bitcoin?
That reply is notable much less as a result of it indicators an imminent transfer and extra as a result of it frames the concept as procedurally potential. For years, the financial institution steadiness sheet query has sat on the far finish of institutional Bitcoin adoption: beyond ETFs, past custody, past shopper entry, and into the realm of prudential capital, examiner expectations, accounting, liquidity planning and board-level danger urge for food.
Oldenburg’s caveat was that the constraint just isn’t a single rule. She pointed first to SAB 121, the SEC accounting steerage that had made it tougher for banks to custody crypto belongings at scale earlier than its rollback modified a part of the equation. However she instantly widened the lens.
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“I believe the opposite factor too is we have been speaking about SAB 121 rolling again on the capital therapy, however it’s not simply that that holds us again,” she mentioned. “It’s Fed steerage, it’s Basel steerage. Once you’re a big G-sub financial institution, it’s not only one company that you just report back to.”
That’s the core of the difficulty for a firm like Morgan Stanley. A worldwide systemically vital financial institution doesn’t consider Bitcoin solely by way of a market-risk lens. It has to fulfill a number of regulators, capital frameworks and jurisdictional expectations directly. Oldenburg mentioned massive banks have “many oversight teams” to take care of and wish “a little bit bit extra alignment throughout the board with a few of these businesses.”
The Backdrop
The Basel level is very vital. The Basel Committee’s cryptoasset customary locations probably the most conservative therapy on unbacked crypto belongings reminiscent of Bitcoin, and business advocates have argued that the 1,250% risk-weight therapy successfully makes direct financial institution balance-sheet publicity uneconomic. The Basel Committee mentioned in February 2026 that it had expedited a focused evaluate of its prudential customary for banks’ cryptoasset exposures, with an replace anticipated later within the 12 months.
The Bitcoin Coverage Institute has been making an attempt to push that debate into the US implementation course of. In March, the group mentioned it deliberate to evaluate and touch upon the Federal Reserve’s coming Basel proposal, arguing that the present therapy discourages banks from holding or servicing Bitcoin due to the punitive danger weight.
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The US facet has additionally been shifting, although not in a straight line towards bank-owned Bitcoin. In April 2025, the Federal Reserve withdrew earlier steerage tied to banks’ crypto-asset and dollar-token actions, saying the transfer would hold expectations aligned with evolving dangers and help innovation within the banking system. The FDIC and OCC additionally moved away from prior-approval fashion frameworks for permissible crypto exercise, whereas sustaining that banks nonetheless want sound danger administration.
Extra lately, US banking businesses clarified that eligible tokenized securities ought to typically obtain the identical capital therapy as their non-tokenized equivalents, describing the capital rule as know-how impartial. That clarification doesn’t clear up Bitcoin’s balance-sheet therapy, as a result of Bitcoin just isn’t a tokenized model of a standard safety. Nevertheless it does present regulators separating blockchain rails from asset danger, quite than treating each digital-asset publicity as the identical class.
That distinction helps clarify Oldenburg’s reply. The trail for a financial institution to carry Bitcoin just isn’t merely “regulators turn out to be extra pro-crypto.” The primary level is Basel: if Bitcoin stays topic to probably the most punitive capital therapy, a G-SIB has little financial incentive to warehouse it as a treasury asset, even when shopper demand is evident.
The second level is Federal Reserve supervision: even after latest rollbacks, massive banks nonetheless want a coherent examiner framework that tells them how Bitcoin publicity can be judged throughout security and soundness, liquidity, operational danger and capital planning.
At press time, BTC traded at $1.3716.
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