Morgan Stanley has filed an amended S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund carrying a 0.14% annual “Delegated Sponsor Fee.” The proposed Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (ticker: MSBT) would price slightly below the current cheapest U.S. retail option and significantly undercut some larger competitors, setting up potential fee-driven competition among BTC ETFs.
At 0.14%, the fee sits one basis point below the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF’s current level and about 11 basis points beneath BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which remains the largest by assets. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart called the move “big,” and suggested MSBT is likely to launch in early April. His colleague Eric Balchunas noted the low fee could remove internal conflicts for Morgan Stanley’s financial advisors when recommending the product—important given the firm’s roughly 16,000 advisors who oversee about $6.2 trillion in client assets.
Morgan Stanley first filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF in early January, alongside a Solana ETF application. The latest filing follows a New York Stock Exchange listing notice, signaling the product could begin trading soon if it receives final approval from regulators. If approved, MSBT would mark the first spot Bitcoin ETF offered by a major U.S. bank, a notable shift for an institution long viewed as relatively cautious on crypto.
The pricing strategy appears aimed at quickly capturing market share in a space where product differentiation is limited and fees are a key battleground. A lower-cost offering from a large wealth manager could increase adoption among high-net-worth and advisory clients, while intensifying fee pressure across competing spot Bitcoin ETFs.