"This is the end of banker hours." That was the assessment from Betsy Graseck, Morgan Stanley's global head of banks and diversified finance research, speaking during a panel discussion on digital assets. "Your batch processing mentality is going to be a thing of the past."
The comment reflects a shift that has been building across financial markets. Banks, exchanges and custodians are investing in technology that allows assets to move 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While cryptocurrencies demonstrated that round-the-clock markets were possible, executives say the same infrastructure is now being applied to traditional assets.
Tokenization as the Gateway
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management investment strategist Denny Galindo predicted that tokenized products — not cryptocurrencies — will be how most mainstream investors first encounter blockchain technology.
"I think we're going to see a lot of mainstream impact from something tokenized that people can buy that they used to have a hard time getting access to," Galindo said. He expects tokenized money market funds and stocks to expand rapidly and serve as the entry point for investors who have never held crypto directly.
A Broadening Product Suite
Morgan Stanley has steadily expanded its digital asset offerings over the past year. The firm began offering spot trading in bitcoin, ether and solana through its E*TRADE platform, while broadening access to cryptocurrency ETFs for wealth management clients. On the asset management side, the bank launched its first spot bitcoin ETF earlier this year, followed this week by spot ether and solana ETPs.
Ali Wallace, Morgan Stanley Investment Management's global head of capital markets and ETF strategy, said growing interest in multi-currency digital asset ETFs represents the next stage of innovation, describing them as the natural evolution of single-asset crypto products.
Graseck's warning to firms ignoring the trend was direct: "If you do not modernize your rails to enable yourself to participate as flows shift to digital asset rails, you're not positioning yourself for growth." Morgan Stanley's launch of Ether and Solana ETPs earlier this week is the latest concrete step in that modernization effort.
