Morgan Stanley taps Coinbase and BNY for Bitcoin ETF custody

Coming as BTC exchange-traded funds flows turn positive, the moves follow the Wall Street bank's applications with the SEC for Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum funds.

Financial services giant Morgan Stanley selected Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon, a global financial services company, and crypto exchange Coinbase as custodians for its Bitcoin Trust Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF), according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.

The custodians will hold all of the fund’s Bitcoin (BTC) in cold storage, or offline methods of storing Bitcoin private keys, with a “portion” of the BTC moving to hot wallets connected to the internet at times for creation and redemption purposes, according to the SEC filing for Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust. The filing said:

Morgan Stanley filed SEC applications for spot BTC and SOL (SOL) ETFs in January. Both funds are passive investment vehicles that hold and track the prices of the underlying crypto assets.

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