Morgan Stanley is seeking to debut its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund with a 0.14% fee, according to an amended filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The fee level is slightly below existing low-cost offerings for similar products and could spark a new wave of price competition among rival BTC ETFs.
MSBT To Have Lowest Fee: “Big Move”
The 0.14% annualized “Delegated Sponsor Fee,” outlined in Morgan Stanley’s latest S-1 registration filed on Friday, would undercut the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC) by one basis point, currently the lowest-cost option in the U.S. market, and come in 11 basis points below the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), which leads the field by assets under management.
“Big move here. They are not messing around,” Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said, predicting that the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) is “likely to launch in early April.”
The pricing move reflects a strategic play. By entering the market with a lower fee, Morgan Stanley may be positioning itself to rapidly capture market share in an industry where products are otherwise difficult to distinguish.
Seyffart’s colleague Eric Balchunas noted that the low fee could ensure that none of Morgan Stanley’s financial advisors—who oversee about $6.2 trillion in client assets—would face conflicts when recommending the product to clients.
 
First Bank to Introduce a Bitcoin ETF
Morgan Stanley, once considered more cautious on crypto than many of its Wall Street peers, filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF in the first week of January, alongside a Solana ETF.
The Friday filing comes after the New York Stock Exchange confirmed it had issued a listing notice for the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, indicating the product could begin trading soon upon final approval.
Should it receive the green light, the fund would represent the first spot Bitcoin ETF from a major U.S. bank.
Balchunas wrote on X that Morgan Stanley is the “first bank to do a Bitcoin ETF (unthinkable a couple of years ago),” adding that it is not just any bank, but a major player with the largest network of financial advisors—around 16,000 managing $6.2 trillion in assets, roughly double that of Merrill, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan.
“They are the ultimate gatekeepers of rich boomer money,” Balchunas added.
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