A cartoon of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump holding cryptocurrency tokens, displayed outside the White House to mark his inauguration, is shown at a Coinhero store in Hong Kong, China, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.
Paul Yeung | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Just for days President Donald Trump Another administration, Wall Street is singing a different tune on cryptocurrencies.
“For us, the equation is really about whether we as a highly regulated financial institutioncan act as Transactors, ” Morgan Stanley Executive Director Ted Pick said CNBC on Thursday at World Economic Forum In Davos, Switzerland.
The newfound optimism among the growing number of banking executives in Davos this week is about Trump’s pro-crypto agenda. Trump, a vocal crypto skeptic in his first term, upset on the issue during his 2024 campaign and came to rely on Crypto industry money In his bid to defeat former Vice President Kamal Harris.
On Thursday, the President issued a Sweeping executive order on cryptocurrencieswith an emphasis on “protecting and promoting” the use and development of digital assets. Banks are reluctant to support cryptocurrencies and enable transactions at this time largely due to the government’s position. The SEC has brought more than 200 cryptocurrency enforcement actions since 2013, According to Cornerstone research.
“We will work with the Treasury and other regulators to figure out how we can offer this in a safe way,” Pick said.
Trump has named multiple cryptocurrency advocates for critical positions in his administration. They include Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was a commissioner under President George W. Bush. Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary, and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent has been tapped to lead the Treasury.
If confirmed, Bessent would oversee the IRS and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, both of which play a key role in shaping tax and compliance policies for crypto transactions and setting guidelines for cryptocurrency adoption in the US.
Pick says Morgan Stanley will work with federal regulators to determine whether it’s possible to deepen the bank’s ties to cryptocurrency markets. His firm was more aggressive than its peers on Wall Street.
in 2021Morgan Stanley has become the first major US bank to offer its wealthy clients access to bitcoin funds. Last August, it was the first major player on Wall Street let your financial advisors go Start throwing clients at some of the Bitcoin trained funds they launched early last year. So far, wealth management firms have only facilitated trades if customers have requested exposure to new crypto funds.
Pick suggested that the more bitcoin penetrates the mainstream, the more it is seen as a legitimate part of the financial system.
“The longer he trades, the perception becomes reality,” he said.
‘Just another form of payment’
Bank of America Executive Director Brian Moynihan He reiterated his willingness to embrace cryptocurrencies, especially as a payment option, if the regulatory environment shifts under the new administration. Speaking in Davos, Moynihan stressed that clear guidelines could unlock wider adoption.
“If the rules come in and you make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you’re going to find that the banking system is going to come hard on the transaction side,” Moynihan said in Interview on Tuesday with CNBC.
Moynihan, who runs the second-largest bank by assets in the US, noted that cryptocurrency could become “just another form of payment,” like Visa,, MasterCard or Apple Pay. However, he took issue with the discussion of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as investments or sales values, calling it a “separate issue.”
Another major roadblock to cryptocurrency adoption on Wall Street was an accounting rule, issued by the SEC in 2022, requiring banks to classify cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets. The rule subjected these assets to strict capital requirements, significantly increasing the financial and regulatory risks of providing cryptocurrency services.
Efforts to overturn the rule, known as SAB 121, gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then President Joe Biden He vetoed the proposed legislation, leaving the rule intact and further discouraging banks from accepting digital assets. Banks are largely barred from expanding their crypto offerings beyond trading derivatives and offering ETFs to wealth management clients.
“Right now, from a regulatory perspective, we can’t own” Bitcoin, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in an interview in Davos this week. He said the bank would revisit the issue if the rules changed.
Late Thursday, the SEC abolished SAB 121, potentially opening the door to banks for crypto assets without such onerous capital requirements.
“Goodbye, goodbye Sab 121! It wasn’t fun,” wrote SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who on Tuesday he was tapped to lead a new “crypto task force”, ua Post on x Late Thursday night after the decision.
Bitcoin hit a record high of nearly $110,000 on Monday ahead of Trump’s inauguration leading broader gains in the cryptocurrency market. About $106,000 was traded from Friday to Friday.
– CNBC’s Hugh Son contributed to this report.
