Morgan Stanley set on launching ‘safe’ crypto products, says CEO

Another big bank CEO spread the crypto gospel as crypto takes centre stage at the World Economic Forum this year.

“We’ll be working with Treasury, and the other regulators to figure out how we can offer [crypto] in a safe way,” Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Pick said that “the equation is really around” how a highly regulated company like Morgan Stanley can act as a transactor.

But that wasn’t the only bullish sentiment out of Davos today.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he wants the SEC to “rapidly approve” the tokenisation of bonds and stocks.

“We should be moving towards that frontier,” Fink told Bloomberg News.

All the bullish sentiment coming out of the World Economic Forum signals that crypto is becoming a usual part of the playbook for traditional financial institutions — bringing in trillions, and pushing prices to new heights.

Just yesterday, Fink said sovereign wealth funds were asking whether a 2% or a 5% allocation was appropriate for Bitcoin.

“If everyone adopted that conversation, it would be $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 per Bitcoin,” Fink said on Wednesday.

Pick and Fink aren’t the only top finance bosses to tout crypto.

Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, told CNBC that the banking system is only waiting for clear rules to “come in hard” into the crypto space.

Robin Vince, the CEO of BNY Mellon, which manages $2 trillion, also said the blockchain industry has a lot of promise.

“Digital assets represent a new interesting, innovative technology, which we think could be important to the financial system over the next 10, 20 years,” said Vince.

Bitcoin trades for $105,700 today, and Ethereum changes hands for $3,300. However, analysts at Standard Chartered see $200,000 per Bitcoin and $10,000 per Ethereum by the end of 2025.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.