1M Shares in 4 Days: Amy Oldenburg on Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin ETF

In this episode of Bitcoin.com News Interviews, host speaks with Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Assets at Morgan Stanley, during Paris Blockchain Week 2026. Oldenburg shares her journey from leading global emerging market investing to spearheading Morgan Stanley’s digital asset strategy, emphasizing the parallels between emerging markets and the crypto space. She discusses the firm’s newly launched spot Bitcoin ETF, which saw over a million shares traded on its fourth day—confirming Morgan Stanley’s timely entry into the market. Oldenburg highlights the ETF’s 14 basis point fee, security advantages, and estate planning benefits as key drivers of momentum. She addresses institutional skepticism around cypherpunk ideals, noting that while some support decentralization in principle, Morgan Stanley’s approach is client-centric, supporting multiple blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperledger. The conversation turns to quantum computing risks, where Oldenburg acknowledges the threat as real but not imminent, stressing that Morgan Stanley is actively researching quantum resilience across all encrypted infrastructure. She also reflects on the evolving importance of layer-1 blockchains, now secondary to the rise of tokenized real-world assets and stablecoins. The episode concludes with a forward-looking perspective on hybrid financial systems and the need for cross-disciplinary expertise in building secure, scalable digital asset infrastructure.