Yahoo Finanza Can Morgan Stanley Be the Largest Bitcoin Owning Institution in 2022?
Key Insights
– Analysts’ speculations suggest that Morgan Stanley may be planning to increase exposure to Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market.
– Morgan Stanley could potentially become the largest Bitcoin-owning institution in 2022.
– However, the American multinational investment bank’s stance on BTC and BTC mining counters the claims of stacking more Bitcoin.
Despite concerns around BTC’s energy consumption, American multinational investment bank Morgan Stanley could be inching closer to becoming the largest Bitcoin-owning institution, as per speculations.
MacroScope’s Twitter account claims that as per data, Morgan Stanley could potentially become the largest Bitcoin-owning institution in the industry by the end of this year.
Institutional Interest in Bitcoin Grows
The year 2021 was a stellar time for BTC as institutional money poured in with firms like Microstrategy, Tesla, Galaxy Digital Holdings, and others stacking SATS. In addition, over the last year, several major firms, like Square and Coinbase, have collectively purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency.
On February 28, analyst MacroScope highlighted that in 2021, Morgan Stanley purchased millions of shares in the Grayscale BTC (GBTC) fund. Notably, GBTC was one of the first instruments that gave exposure to the digital assets market for institutional players like Morgan Stanley.
Morgan Stanley's asset management arm bought millions of shares of Grayscale BTC in 2021.
Morgan just disclosed major increases in ownership across a large number of its institutional funds. These are mostly double-digit percentage increases, up to 26% on the high end.
— MacroScope (@MacroScope17) February 28, 2022
The analyst further suggested significant increases in Morgan Stanley’s ownership in many of its institutional funds. According to balance sheets, the gains are primarily double-digit, with up to a 26% increase on the high end.
Data from December 31, 2021, highlights that the investment bank’s growth portfolio had 4.29 million shares, an 18% increase. Since then, Morgan Stanley has added more GBTC shares to its balance sheet, increasing its exposure.
Morgan Stanley is already one of the largest institutional Bitcoin investors, and they are most likely to increase their exposure. For now, however, there was no clear indication from the firm about adding more BTC to their wallet.
A Perplexing Stance
While according to speculations, Morgan Stanley was preparing to add more BTC to their account. A recent report stressed how ‘Bitcoin cannot escape energy requirements.’
The American banking giant further said that mining for cryptocurrencies could be highly energy-intensive.
Furthermore, the firm noted that ‘Bitcoin mining alone requires the same amount of electricity as the Netherlands’ annual total power generation, or 0.5% of total global electricity consumption.’ Seemingly, the bank’s stance around cryptocurrencies appears skewed.
That said, institutional interest in BTC has kept on rising. Large firms’ first significant steps towards BTC adoption happened when cloud software company MicroStrategy bought $425 million worth of Bitcoin in August and September 2020. Soon after, other firms followed suit, including payments processor Square and EV manufacturer Tesla.
This article was originally posted on FX Empire
