Morgan Stanley Unveils Spot Bitcoin and Solana ETFs

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are off to a hot start in 2026. Morgan Stanley, which manages almost $9 trillion in assets under management across client wealth and investment accounts, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a spot Bitcoin and spot Solana ETF today, Jan. 6.

Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas commented on the move in an X post, calling it a “shocker.” Balchunas expanded on his thoughts, saying:

“I like this move by them. It's smart. They have like $8T in advisory assets and they already OK'd those advisors to allocate so might as well be in their own branded fund vs paying BlackRock or someone else.”

Flows Pick Up

Traditional finance investors have been happy to scoop up Bitcoin products in the new year, with the first two trading days of the year commanding more than $1 billion in net inflows, a strong divergence away from ETFs' poor December, which was plagued with outflows.

Spot Solana ETFs on the other hand have been relatively stale, garnering just $25 million since Jan. 1, and less than $1 billion in total — though they’ve notably seen net inflows almost every day since launching in October.

Morgan Stanley’s move today marks the first major U.S. bank to enter the crypto ETF space, while current products are issued by investment giants such as BlackRock, Invesco and Fidelity.

Despite the wide array of Bitcoin ETF options on the market, BlackRock dominates the sector, with its IBIT fund commanding almost $63 billion in cumulative net inflows, accounting for 108% of the total BTC ETF flow, considering Grayscale’s BTC trust redemptions have resulted in $25 billion in negative flows.

Timot Lamarre, director of market research at Bitcoin custody firm Unchained, told The Defiant: