Morgan Stanley's spot Bitcoin ETF (MSBT) has completed its first month of operation without a single day of net outflows. This marks the best performance among its competitors during the same period.
Source: SoSoValue.The fund launched on April 8, attracting $30.6 million on its first day with a trading volume of $34 million. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas ranked this debut among the top 1% of ETF launches in history. Notably, on the same day, the entire segment experienced a net outflow of $94 million.
By mid-May, daily inflows into MSBT had decreased from tens of millions to single millions, but the fund never recorded a net outflow. Other major players, such as BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC, have faced occasional outflows.
The key to MSBT's success is its low annual fee of 0.14%, the lowest in the U.S. market. For institutional investors, this 0.11% difference compared to IBIT translates to savings of $1.1 million for every billion invested.
In its first six days of trading, MSBT attracted $103 million, surpassing WisdomTree's BTCW, which has been trading since January.
Head of Digital Assets at Morgan Stanley, Amy Oldenburg, noted that nearly all of the capital came from retail clients. The bank has yet to fully open access to the fund for its 16,000 financial advisors, who manage assets totaling $9.3 trillion.
Balchunas predicts that MSBT's assets under management could reach $5 billion in its first year, provided the bank engages its wealth management advisors in sales.
As a reminder, in March, Morgan Stanley filed an S-1 application with the SEC to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF.