Morgan Stanley Digital Asset Head: Bitcoin Reaching One Million Not Surprising, But a Crisis That Breaks the Old System May Be Needed for a Real Breakout

Compiled & Translated by: Shenchao TechFlow

Guest: Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy, Morgan Stanley

Host: Natalie Brunell

Podcast Source: Natalie Brunell

Original Title: When Will Bitcoin Hit a New ATH? Wall Street Insider Explains

Air Date: June 10, 2026

Key Takeaways

Morgan Stanley, managing trillions of dollars in assets, is now pushing Bitcoin to its clients. In this conversation, Amy Oldenburg, its Head of Digital Asset Strategy, reveals a paradox: MSBT set a first-day issuance record for the bank's ETFs, yet most financial advisors remain reluctant to recommend it to clients, as Bitcoin's price has essentially traded sideways since the recommendation. She doesn't believe the next surge will come from a new product or policy tailwind, but may require an event that shatters the traditional financial system as a catalyst. And she wouldn't be surprised to see Bitcoin surpass one million dollars within five years, she just hopes the rise is gradual.

Key Highlights

Tech Roots: From the 1999 Dot-com Bubble to Emerging Markets

• "Every stage of my life has coincided with some technological change that, at the time, seemed incredibly obscure and faced massive skepticism. It's only now that I can clearly see how the whole historical puzzle fits together."
• "The old traders I dealt with daily in the market endured the 2008 global financial crisis with me. We went through that financial tsunami together. The core backbone of this group later became some of the earliest hardcore Bitcoin buyers."
• "Bitcoin's earliest evangelists and heavy users weren't just from Silicon Valley's geek circle; they came in large numbers from cross-border and international financial markets – people working on the trading front lines, desperately seeking alternatives to the traditional centralized banking system."

Why Bitcoin Made Sense Early On

• "In those less developed markets, the traditional brick-and-mortar banking system is extremely backward. The vast majority of the底层 population can't open a bank account in their lifetime, so they have to rely entirely on and embrace mobile money."
• "You're in a small village where even electricity isn't available 24/7, with dirt roads everywhere. And there you see a small Vodafone kiosk, like a lemonade stand, with the words M-Pesa written on it. That's where you put your cash onto your phone."
• "Because we've deeply cultivated so many emerging markets, we know intimately that people there have ample reason to embrace decentralization. Traditional financial infrastructure there is extremely unreliable, lacks contractual integrity, and is even accompanied by severe systemic corruption, which I experienced firsthand on the trading desk."

Why Haven't Institutional Investors Piled into Bitcoin?

• "Our entire group is legally structured as a bank holding company. This means we must adhere to a much stricter set of capital adequacy and risk control requirements specific to the banking system – because standing over our heads is the formidable Federal Reserve."

Record Demand for MSBT

• "You always tout your own product, but you never really know what will happen until it actually goes live. The result surprised many."
• "Combining GSIB-grade issuance with GSIB-grade custody was our first goal in bringing this product to market, and it also served as a way for us to understand what else needs to develop within the ecosystem."

Will Morgan Stanley Issue Digital Credit?

• "I know there's something there in digital credit – but most people haven't even figured out Bitcoin yet, let alone more advanced products on top of it."
• "Education is the barrier limiting the community and financial advisors from engaging with these products."
• "Some product elements are very compelling, but there's always something that doesn't quite fit, a bit like the early Blackberry story."

The Advisor Gap: Why Isn't Everyone Recommending Bitcoin?

• "If we had given the recommendation at $10,000 or $15,000, and it subsequently ran to $100,000, the momentum would be behind us. But interestingly, since our recommendation, we've largely been trading sideways in a range."
• "Financial advisors have a fiduciary duty to select suitable assets for the specific client in front of them. Not every client is a growth investor."

What is Holding Bitcoin Back?

• "We always get stuck in black-and-white debates: will Bitcoin succeed or fail? But we live in a very complex world where various narratives get mixed up, diluting attention and allocation."
• "Global mainstream capital's attention and liquidity for asset allocation are brutally fragmented."
• "I hate to say this, but it might actually take a crisis – where we shatter the existing system, and Bitcoin is the only thing left intact."

Corporate Balance Sheets

• "Banks don't hold Bitcoin because they dislike it, but because there are more capital-efficient assets. If capital regulatory conditions don't improve, we'll focus our energy on those more favorable assets."
• "If no one really needs tokenized stocks, there's no reason for us to spend a lot of money on it. If demand comes, we will do it. The same logic applies to Bitcoin."

The Future of Bitcoin

• "I don't expect to see a magical J-curve taking off suddenly in 2027. It's more likely we'll continue a slow climb, with more participants gradually entering, getting educated, and slowly understanding."
• "Bitcoin reaching one million dollars? That's great. I don't see why it's impossible. Given everything I've seen in my lifetime, I believe anything is possible."

Winner-Take-All Tech vs. Redundant Finance: The Future of the Industry

• "That 'winner-takes-all' culture you see in tech and many tech-related fields is completely at odds with financial services. The essence of financial services is redundancy and numerous participants."
• "When we do RFP processes, we start with a dozen or so candidates, hoping to have a top three to choose from. But in the tech sector, often only one, maybe two, can truly meet our hard requirements."

Addressing Skepticism of Big Banks

• "In emerging markets, the 'distrust' people have in the traditional official financial system isn't some abstract theory from textbooks; it's a bleeding, harsh reality they live with every day."
• "From a die-hard Bitcoin maximalist's perspective, taking spot Bitcoin and putting it into an ETP from a traditional financial institution is heresy to many. Yet, it's happening on a scale I wouldn't have predicted."
• "Holding ETP shares is not the same as holding Bitcoin. You have price exposure. This needs to be reiterated repeatedly."

Tech Roots: From the 1999 Dot-com Bubble to Emerging Markets

Host Natalie Brunell: Our guest today is Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Morgan Stanley. Amy, I really want to hear the story of how you got involved with Bitcoin, and your over twenty-year legendary journey at Morgan Stanley.

Amy Oldenburg:

I've been at Morgan Stanley for 26 years, though it wasn't part of my plan. I grew up in a small Midwest town in Ohio. It's funny – as you asked in our pre-show chat: "How did you end up here? How did you get on this crazy ride of digital assets and Bitcoin?"

I'm a deep Gen Xer like you, and I totally resonate with your experiences. Sometimes I look at memes online about how kids in the 80s and 90s grew up. Looking back, technology started reshaping us subconsciously at a very early age. I remember being seven or eight, spending hours in the basement playing Atari with my cousins. Then NES came out, and Super Mario Brothers blew our minds. It feels like every key juncture in my life coincided with some disruptive technological wave.

One Christmas, my dad bought us a Tandy computer, and we started messing around with early PC games – it felt incredible. Then tech kept accelerating. In high school, we were still learning basic typing in the computer lab. By college, tech started cutting deeper into our daily lives.

I remember a professor getting an early Blackberry beta unit, and our entire marketing class became seed users. We sat in class, completely puzzled by what it was for – it didn't have apps, it was just a brick. We joked, "What's the difference between this and our high school pagers? You can send letters and numbers, but none of our friends have this fancy thing, who are we sending to?" It evolved into the version with the iconic full keyboard, became ubiquitous for a while, and then suddenly became obsolete. That's exactly what happened.

The funny thing is my college major. I was studying accounting, but the school didn't allow accounting majors to study abroad. At the time, I was desperate to escape Ohio – the farther the better. I'd happily be sent to international markets across the ocean. Since I couldn't go abroad, the next best thing was a domestic exchange program in San Francisco. I was studying in New York at the time, so in 1999, I packed my bags and moved to San Francisco – right into the peak of the insane dot-com bubble.

I was young and had no idea how crazy the world was. In Silicon Valley, I started an internship the next day at a startup building websites for Fortune 500 companies. After two months of paid internship, I decisively dropped my accounting major entirely. The feeling was just too strong – this ongoing technological transformation was going to fundamentally disrupt the future.

Back then, we followed our company to various industry events. Google was just a fledgling startup. They were handing out tiny slips of paper at conferences to recruit, saying, "If interested, check out our Craigslist page to apply." We raised an eyebrow: "Google? What kind of name is that? The business model makes no sense – who would use it to search? It can't succeed."

So you see, every stage of my life has coincided with some technological change that seemed incredibly obscure and faced massive skepticism. It's only now that I can see the whole picture clearly.

As for how I got into digital assets and Bitcoin – I only moved to Morgan Stanley after the dot-com bubble burst. I stayed in San Francisco at that startup during the bust but was later transferred back to HQ in New York. But everyone knew the environment had completely collapsed. We were forced to withdraw our S-1 filing, failed to go public, and immediately faced two brutal rounds of layoffs. I needed a Plan B urgently because I had rent to pay – and I was absolutely not going back to Ohio.

That's when I landed at Morgan Stanley, somewhat by chance. A close friend of mine worked in HR at Morgan Stanley. She said, "I know you're focused on tech and not into traditional finance right now. But I have tons of open positions; if you know anyone looking, send them my way." I thought, maybe I should try it myself, just to keep my options open.

So I made the jump, landing in the Emerging Markets team. The aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis was still lingering, and the 1994 Tequila Crisis had just passed – emerging markets were a mess. The team I joined changed leadership several times in just a few years. We also felt the severe impact of the dot-com bust on financial assets around 2000-2001. And, dramatically, September 11th happened precisely nine months into my tenure. It was one crisis after another, while underlying technological change was still advancing furiously.

During my time at Morgan Stanley, I spent years on the trading desk, focusing on Programmatic Trading and Emerging Markets FX Trading. The old traders I dealt with daily in the market endured the 2008 global financial crisis with me. We went through that financial tsunami together, and the core backbone of this group later became some of the earliest hardcore Bitcoin buyers.

Bitcoin's earliest evangelists and heavy users weren't just from Silicon Valley's geek circle; they came in large numbers from cross-border and international financial markets – people on the trading front lines, desperately seeking alternatives to the traditional centralized banking system.

Because we've deeply cultivated so many emerging markets, we know the overwhelming reasons people there have to embrace decentralization – the unreliability, lack of contractual integrity, and severe systemic corruption we witnessed firsthand on the trading desk.

So, it was through this frontline financial market experience, combined with my early tech network (some friends were early pioneers in peer-to-peer file sharing), that I became aware of Bitcoin very early and acutely. Those digital trading and risk technology skills later transitioned quite smoothly into the digital asset field.

Why Bitcoin Made Sense Early On

Host Natalie Brunell: Since you were so early to this space, did you invest early yourself, or did you wait until later when traditional finance formally entered and the industry became compliant?

Amy Oldenburg:

Not really. It's funny, my brother was over last week, and we were reminiscing. Around 2012, he got excited and wanted to set up some machines to mine Bitcoin. I laughed at him, saying we didn't have powerful enough hardware at home.

You also have to remember, the crypto environment back then was extremely precarious and dangerous – nothing like today where you can just download a sleek Coinbase app. Honestly, back then, your only option to buy was to deal with sketchy platforms like Mt.Gox. And working at Morgan Stanley, I thought I'd get fired if I touched that stuff. The compliance risk and operational cost were too high for me. So, while I followed it closely and spent a ton of time observing from the sidelines, I definitely wasn't one of those hardcore early miners coding in my basement.

Host Natalie Brunell: Let's zoom out. Reflecting on your experience investing in Emerging Markets, was there a core takeaway that later mapped directly onto Bitcoin's meteoric rise? A lesson learned from the trenches that made you think, "Aha! That's the root of why Bitcoin makes sense"?

Amy Oldenburg:

Yes, and the intuition was incredibly strong. Go back to 2007, right before the global financial crisis. Fintech followers today are likely familiar with M-Pesa (the Kenyan mobile wallet pioneer) and the explosive growth of mobile payments in Africa and other emerging markets. But few know that our Morgan Stanley team was deeply involved in underwriting and investing in the IPO of its parent company, Safaricom, around 2006-2007.