Morgan Stanley’s Amy Oldenburg mentioned a future transfer by main banks to place Bitcoin on their steadiness sheets is “not completely out of the query,” pointing to regulatory progress whereas warning that capital guidelines and international supervisory alignment nonetheless matter.
Talking throughout a Bitcoin 2026 convention panel, Oldenburg was requested what it will take for a financial institution like Morgan Stanley, or one other regulated monetary establishment, to make the leap from providing Bitcoin publicity to really holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset.
“Bitcoin on the steadiness sheet,” she mentioned, pausing on the premise. “You realize, I believe if we proceed to see the progress that we’ve made during the last 16 months or so in regulatory, that that’s one thing that you could be see going ahead. It’s not completely out of the query.”
Morgan Stanley And Bitcoin?
That reply is notable much less as a result of it indicators an imminent transfer and extra as a result of it frames the thought as procedurally doable. For years, the financial institution steadiness sheet query has sat on the far finish of institutional Bitcoin adoption: past ETFs, past custody, past consumer entry, and into the realm of prudential capital, examiner expectations, accounting, liquidity planning and board-level danger urge for food.
Oldenburg’s caveat was that the constraint is just not a single rule. She pointed first to SAB 121, the SEC accounting steerage that had made it tougher for banks to custody crypto belongings at scale earlier than its rollback modified a part of the equation. However she instantly widened the lens.
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“I believe the opposite factor too is we had been speaking about SAB 121 rolling again on the capital remedy, but it surely’s not simply that that holds us again,” she mentioned. “It’s Fed steerage, it’s Basel steerage. While you’re a big G-sub financial institution, it’s not only one company that you just report back to.”
That’s the core of the problem for a agency like Morgan Stanley. A world systemically essential financial institution doesn’t consider Bitcoin solely by a market-risk lens. It has to fulfill a number of regulators, capital frameworks and jurisdictional expectations directly. Oldenburg mentioned giant banks have “many oversight teams” to take care of and want “just a little bit extra alignment throughout the board with a few of these businesses.”
The Backdrop
The Basel level is particularly essential. The Basel Committee’s cryptoasset normal locations essentially the most conservative remedy on unbacked crypto belongings comparable to Bitcoin, and trade advocates have argued that the 1,250% risk-weight remedy successfully makes direct financial institution balance-sheet publicity uneconomic. The Basel Committee mentioned in February 2026 that it had expedited a focused evaluation of its prudential normal for banks’ cryptoasset exposures, with an replace anticipated later within the 12 months.
The Bitcoin Coverage Institute has been attempting to push that debate into the US implementation course of. In March, the group mentioned it deliberate to evaluation and touch upon the Federal Reserve’s coming Basel proposal, arguing that the present remedy discourages banks from holding or servicing Bitcoin due to the punitive danger weight.
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The US facet has additionally been transferring, although not in a straight line towards bank-owned Bitcoin. In April 2025, the Federal Reserve withdrew earlier steerage tied to banks’ crypto-asset and dollar-token actions, saying the transfer would maintain expectations aligned with evolving dangers and help innovation within the banking system. The FDIC and OCC additionally moved away from prior-approval model frameworks for permissible crypto exercise, whereas sustaining that banks nonetheless want sound danger administration.
Extra just lately, US banking businesses clarified that eligible tokenized securities ought to typically obtain the identical capital remedy as their non-tokenized equivalents, describing the capital rule as know-how impartial. That clarification doesn’t remedy Bitcoin’s balance-sheet remedy, as a result of Bitcoin is just not a tokenized model of a conventional safety. Nevertheless it does present regulators separating blockchain rails from asset danger, reasonably than treating each digital-asset publicity as the identical class.
That distinction helps clarify Oldenburg’s reply. The trail for a financial institution to carry Bitcoin is just not merely “regulators turn out to be extra pro-crypto.” The primary level is Basel: if Bitcoin stays topic to essentially the most punitive capital remedy, a G-SIB has little financial incentive to warehouse it as a treasury asset, even when consumer demand is evident.
The second level is Federal Reserve supervision: even after latest rollbacks, giant banks nonetheless want a coherent examiner framework that tells them how Bitcoin publicity will probably be judged throughout security and soundness, liquidity, operational danger and capital planning.
At press time, BTC traded at $1.3716.
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