NEW YORK – Amy Oldenburg, the head of digital asset strategy at Morgan Stanley (MS), dismissed the idea that Wall Street is only now embracing crypto because of fear of missing out, arguing that big banks are acting after years of preparation.
“TradFi is getting FOMO and now getting involved … it’s really not accurate,” Oldenburg said during a panel at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday. “We’ve been on a journey around the whole modernization of financial infrastructure for years.”
Her comments come as major US banks, long seen as cautious about crypto or laggards to the industry, begin to expand their offerings. For years, firms such as Morgan Stanley limited activity to indirect exposure, such as offering wealthy clients access to bitcoin funds.
More recently, it has included spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on its E*Trade platform, and this month the bank even filed to launch its own spot bitcoin ETF.
Wider participation was held back by regulatory uncertainty and concerns about custody, compliance and market structure. That attitude has begun to shift, and Morgan Stanley has now outlined a more defined digital asset strategy with efforts spanning trading, asset management and infrastructure.
Oldenburg said the bank is preparing to support tokenized stock trading on its alternative trading system.
“One of the things we’re planning for the second half of 2026 is to reverse our intersection … to support tokenized stocks later this year,” she said. The platform already handles stocks, ETFs and American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), which she described as a natural base for expansion.
Inside the company, the transition requires reworking of core systems. “We have to reteach ourselves what legacy infrastructure, pipes and plumbing look like,” Oldenburg said, pointing to the challenge of upgrading decades-old financial architecture to support faster settlement and continuous trading.
She also highlighted a gap between crypto startups and large institutions.
“There are so many other connection points that we have to connect around that,” she said, noting that founders often underestimate how complex banking systems are.
Still, areas like stablecoins are gaining traction as a way to move money faster and at lower cost than traditional systems.
However, adoption depends on coordination across the financial system. “We can’t just modernize on our own,” Oldenburg said. “This is an incredibly complex, integrated global network.”
Despite weak token prices, she said activity continues to build. “It’s really very early innings,” Oldenburg said, signaling that Wall Street’s deeper integration with crypto may be gradual, but it’s underway.
