Morgan Stanley plans to offer a new way for clients to invest in Bitcoin and potentially benefit from its growth without actually buying any of the cryptocurrency itself.
The US investment bank will offer contracts that are tied to the value fluctuations of the cryptocurrency. This gives clients a form of synthetic exposure to Bitcoin’s performance, an anonymous source close to the matter told Bloomberg.
Morgan Stanley will not trade Bitcoin directly, the source said. The offered contracts are tied to Bitcoin futures contracts; payouts to investors will be made based on increases or decreases in Bitcoin’s price over set future intervals.
The informant further stated that Morgan Stanley is effectively already able to offer these trading contracts. The only holdup is undergoing the institution’s internal approval process.
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The source did not state when this approval process would be completed, however.
Even though the SEC is still making its mind up about Bitcoin, the situation has not dissuaded investment banks from finding ways to offer cryptocurrency-related products to investors.
Citigroup devised “Digital Asset Receipts” which allow customers to invest in cryptocurrencies without actually owning them. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is still working on its Bitcoin trading platform, which we will get at some unknown point in the future.
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