Morgan Stanley Figuring Out How to Act as Transactors of Crypto, CEO Says

Morgan Stanley (MS) is figuring out how it can act as a transactor in the crypto market, CEO Ted Pick said.

The bank, which has some $1.6 trillion of assets under management, will work with the U.S. Treasury and other regulators to figure out how it can offer crypto in a safe way, Pick said in an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.

“For us, the equation is really around whether we, as a highly-regulated financial institution, can act as transactors,” he said.

Pick had been asked about his views on cryptocurrency in the U.S. under the supposedly pro-crypto presidency of Donald Trump.

He described how Morgan Stanley is assessing whether the crypto industry has come of age as an asset class.

“I think there is liquidity and that liquidity will express itself in all kinds of different ways,” Pick said in an apparent reference to the availability of crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S.

U.S. spot bitcoin (BTC) ETFs now hold a combined $39 billion worth of the largest cryptocurrency and first started trading in early January last year.