Morgan Stanley Widens Crypto Bet with Proposed Spot Ethereum ETF After Bitcoin and Solana Filings

Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund, extending its push into crypto products just a day after submitting paperwork for Bitcoin and Solana ETFs. The S-1 registration statement filed on Wednesday outlines plans for a Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust that would hold ether and seek to track its price while also generating rewards from staking a portion of the fund’s holdings.

According to paperwork published on the SEC’s website, the trust would reflect those rewards through its net asset value, rather than distributing staking rewards directly to shareholders. This structure differs from the approaches taken by some rival Ethereum ETF issuers that have begun paying staking income to investors, such as Grayscale.

The proposed Ethereum ETF comes swiftly after Morgan Stanley filed for spot Bitcoin and Solana Trusts, marking three crypto ETF filings in roughly 24 hours from one of the largest wealth managers in the world and the sixth-biggest U.S. bank by asset under management. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balchunas said the initial filings on Tuesday came as a surprise, as The Block previously reported.

Morgan Stanley’s filings add to a growing pipeline of crypto investment products as institutional interest continues to build. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have already attracted substantial trading activity since launching in early 2024, with cumulative U.S. spot crypto ETF volumes recently surpassing $2 trillion, according to data tracked by The Block.

While smaller than the BTC ETFs complex, the basket of spot Ethereum products has also attracted substantial interest and capital. Indeed, spot ETH ETFs currently hold about $20 billion in assets, data from analytics provider SoSoValue shows. The filings follow Morgan Stanley’s broader moves into digital assets, including setting a cap on crypto exposure for certain portfolios and plans to expand crypto access across client accounts, including retirement plans.

Terron Gold