Per a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission released on Jan. 8, investment bank Morgan Stanley had acquired 792,627 shares in business intelligence firm MicroStrategy. The investment represents a 10.9% stake in a firm that has made massive investments in Bitcoin over the past several months. The purchase apparently happened on Dec. 31. MicroStrategy has had a colossal month, seeing its shares move from $289 on Dec. 8 to $545 as of Jan. 8. In August, MicroStrategy took bold steps into crypto, making Bitcoin its primary reserve asset. At the time, CEO Michael Saylor said of the firm's choice: …

Major American cryptocurrency exchange Gemini is expanding the company’s business in the Asia-Pacific region with a new high-profile hire. Andy Meehan, a former executive at major American investment bank Morgan Stanley, has joined Gemini as chief compliance officer of the APAC region. Announcing the news on Oct. 7, Gemini executives noted that Meehan will work with regulators to promote smart regulations that drive adoption. Formerly head of legal for Morgan Stanley’s global financial crimes division in the APAC, Meehan will now shape strategy, product and operations of Gemini in the region. The new Gemini CCO will be based in Singapore …

A cryptocurrency derivatives exchange led by eight former Morgan Stanley executives claims it is the world’s fastest. Phemex says its “user-oriented” approach has led to the creation of an ecosystem where traders can buy and sell contracts with confidence. The platform offers latency speeds of under one millisecond, and the company claims that its infrastructure can handle more than 300,000 transactions per second. Reliability is another crucial concern. To this end, it offers 99.9999% availability. Given that some of the more established exchanges in the marketplace have suffered outages whenever Bitcoin has made major price moves, this could prove crucial …

Major investment bank Morgan Stanley is buying online trading firm E*Trade Financial Group, which would extend the bank’s offerings to everyday investors. The $13 billion deal marks Morgan Stanley’s largest takeover since the crisis of 2008, also bringing along E*Trade’s five million clients, $360 billion in assets and an online bank, the Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 20. With the acquisition of E*Trade, Morgan Stanley will receive over 4,000 corporate customers and $580 billion of stock held on behalf of their employees. At the same time, E*Trade’s CEO, Michael Pizzi will retain its position, and the company will keep …

Eight former core developers from financial services company Morgan Stanley have launched Phemex, a new cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform, in Singapore. In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Dec. 4, the former Morgan Stanley developers claim the platform is ten times faster than traditional crypto trading platforms, while offering 100x leverage to both retail and institutional investors in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP) perpetual contracts. Exchange is “on par with Nasdaq” In the near future, these contracts will reportedly also be backed by traditional financial products, such as stock indexes, interest rates, foreign exchange, agricultural commodities, and …

Institutional investment is increasingly being seen as the future of crypto trading, with both Binance and Bittrex launching their own dedicated over-the-counter (OTC) desks in January. The desk launches come after Morgan Stanley published a bullish report in November, showing a strong pattern of institutional investment for Bitcoin. The latest developments indicate that some of the world’s largest exchanges are receiving increased demand from institutional investors, for whom OTC represents a lucrative opportunity. Cointelegraph takes a look at the latest launches and OTC news. Binance launches dedicated OTC desk On Jan. 23, the number-one ranked cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced the …

In 2018, barely a month passed without an official at a financial institution or government department calling on crypto to clean up its act. In the last quarter of the year alone, the United States Department of the Treasury, the Canadian Parliament and the Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service all urged or announced the introduction of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws for cryptocurrencies, and all of them based their moves on the (noticeably mistaken) presumption that cryptocurrencies are a primary haven for criminals, who use them either as a medium of exchange for illicit goods or as a means of hiding …

Wall Street giants are postponing their plans to more actively enter the crypto industry as the value of cryptocurrencies has fallen, Bloomberg reports Sunday, Dec. 23. The article begins: "Limbo — that’s where to find Wall Street when it comes to cryptocurrencies," and then focuses on the efforts in the crypto sphere this year made by banking giant Goldman Sachs, multinational financial services company Morgan Stanley, major banking conglomerate Citigroup Inc. and United Kingdom financial services provider Barclays PLC. According to people familiar with Goldman Sachs’ crypto business, the firm’s progress has been too slow to be noticeable. Moreover, the …

U.S. forex exchange (FX) settlement giant CLS’ blockchain payment netting service has gone live today, Nov. 28. According to the the company’s press release, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are among the initial users of the service, which was built in conjunction with IBM. The CLS Group reportedly settles an average of $5 trillion in payment instructions daily, and has members including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Barclays, and Citigroup. The company’s CLSNet, described as the “first global FX market enterprise application running on blockchain in production,” also has “committed” participation from six international entities including the Hong Kong branch of the …

On October 31, multinational investment bank and financial services company, Morgan Stanley, released their latest report on Bitcoin. The report, entitled “Update: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain,” stated that Bitcoins and altcoins have constituted a “new institutional investment class” since 2017. In comparison to Morgan Stanley’s 2017 report on Bitcoin, their 2018 outlook is bullish. The report contains an overview of both how Bitcoin has evolved, and how its investment purpose has changed throughout its existence. Morgan Stanley analysts also touched upon the recent stablecoin trend and both central bank and regulator reactions to Bitcoin for the last six months. The …

Bitcoin and altcoins has been a “new institutional investment class” since 2017, U.S. multinational investment bank and financial services company Morgan Stanley claims in a new report released Oct. 31. The document, titled "Bitcoin Decrypted: A Brief Teach-In and Implications," sees the newly-bullish Morgan Stanley weigh in on the “surprising” developments in cryptocurrency that continue to the present day. According to its latest findings, the “surprises” to come from crypto in 2018 are a “strong” formation of new funds targeting the sector, as well as the “growth” of cryptocurrency-tied futures. Despite the persisting bear market this year and the accompanying …

U.S. banking giant Morgan Stanley is planning to offer clients Bitcoin trade swaps, anonymous sources told Bloomberg Thursday, September 13. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the publication reveals the U.S. multinational will follow in the footsteps of fellow Wall Street players in pursuing Bitcoin exposure options. According to the sources, Morgan Stanley “will deal in contracts that give investors synthetic exposure to the performance of Bitcoin.” “Investors will be able to go long or short using the so-called price return swaps, and Morgan Stanley will charge a spread for each transaction,” they added. The news marks the latest commitment …