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Points of Focus
- Morgan Stanley opened a 20,000 sq ft Digital Asset Lab across New York, Glasgow and Bangalore.
- The lab tests stablecoins, tokenized deposits and DeFi vaults, with no client launch date set.
- JPMorgan and Citi already run live tokenized deposit services for institutional clients.
Morgan Stanley has opened a Digital Asset Lab to test stablecoins, tokenization and decentralized finance applications, Bloomberg reported on Sep. 29. The lab occupies 20,000 square feet in total across sites in New York, Glasgow and Bangalore.
Wall Street continues to push into crypto.
Morgan Stanley has launched a Digital Asset Lab to test stablecoins, tokenized deposits, DeFi vaults and tokenized money market funds.
Goldman Sachs is plugging its ~$100 billion FTIXX Treasury fund into institutional crypto settlement… pic.twitter.com/f7ijyqkOqf
— Frank Chaparro (@fintechfrank) September 29, 2026
Amy Oldenburg, who heads the bank’s digital-asset team, did not set a launch date for any client product, according to the same report.
Morgan Stanley Digital Asset Lab tests stablecoins, tokenized deposits and money funds
The lab sits inside Morgan Stanley’s existing innovation lab network, which Megan Brewer, who leads market innovation and labs, says runs up to 270 projects a year. Bloomberg says the facilities resemble data centers.
Staff can test stablecoins, tokenized deposits, central-bank digital currencies, tokenized money market funds and DeFi vaults. Oldenburg describes the space as a secure, compliant and segregated environment, so experiments stay apart from the bank’s production systems.
Brewer describes the labs as the place where technology earns the right to scale at the firm, which places the digital-asset work among many tracks feeding a wider pipeline. Bloomberg’s report names no partners for the lab.
Morgan Stanley DeFi vaults gain a public endorsement from its digital-asset head
Oldenburg said, “There is a very reasonable path to see vaults being part of the future going forward.”
The statement is a view on direction, not a product commitment, and the report names no partners or protocols.
Anything leaving the lab would still face the same credit, custody, and conduct tests as the rest of the firm.
E*Trade crypto trading and ETF filings show Morgan Stanley’s distribution push
The lab is the build side of a strategy already reaching clients.
On Jul. 16, 2026, Morgan Stanley completed the rollout of E*Trade crypto trading for bitcoin, ethereum and solana at 50 basis points. Zero Hash LLC handles custody and execution in a separate non-brokerage account, and the assets are not FDIC insured or SIPC protected.
The release cites a Morgan Stanley Wealth Management survey of 940 self-directed investors, fielded Apr. 1 to 20, 2026, in which 32% said an established company they can trust was their top priority when choosing a crypto trading platform. The finding suggests why a bank would test infrastructure in a segregated lab before putting it in front of clients.
On Jan. 6, 2026, the bank filed S-1 registration statements for a Bitcoin Trust and a Solana Trust with the SEC. The filings remain registration statements, and the bank has not said when either fund would list.
Bank tokenized deposits at JPMorgan and Citi are already live
Morgan Stanley entered the tokenization race after larger banks began shipping.
JPMorgan launched its JPM Coin (JPMD) deposit token on Coinbase’s Base network for institutional clients on Nov. 12, 2025. B2C2, Coinbase, and Mastercard completed proof-of-concept transactions, per the release, which is more than 90 days old and provided no volume figures.
Citi expanded Citi Token Services into Japan and the UAE on Sep. 28. The service now covers seven markets: the United States, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Japan and the UAE.
Kanika Thakur, Citi’s head of services for Japan, Asia North and Australia, said the expansion enables “USD transactions to move in and out of Japan in real time.” The service supports 24/7 liquidity, payments and collateral management outside banking cut-off times.
By comparison, Morgan Stanley’s lab has no launch date, and its work is limited to testing.
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