Morgan Stanley Launches First Bitcoin ETF, Attracts $411 Million in Inflows
The line separating traditional finance from digital assets grows harder to find by the day, as banks, brokers, and treasury desks deepen their crypto commitments even as miners reckon with the real economics of an AI pivot. On-chain, sovereign funds are selling, dormant whales are stirring, and leveraged traders are flipping direction. It is a market in motion in every direction at once. Stay up on the crypto news that matters with "Crypto Currents," daily from The Fly. Join us at 2 PM ET for your essential briefing on the fast-moving world of cryptocurrency on FlyCast radio.BITCOIN TREASURY UPDATES AND PREFERRED EQUITY:In a regulatory filing, Strive(ASST)revealed that it raised the dividend on its SATA variable rate perpetual preferred stock by 25 basis points to 13% effective April 15, declared a $1.0833 per share dividend payable May 15, and disclosed the purchase of approximately 27 additional bitcoin(BTC-USD), bringing its total treasury holdings to roughly 13,768 bitcoin. The SATA yield has now climbed from 12.5% at inception, a mirror in miniature, of the Strategy(MSTR)preferred-issuance-to-bitcoin flywheel. Separately,CoinDesk reportedthat firms and DeFi protocols are accumulating Strategy's STRC preferred stock, which carries an approximately 11.5% yield, seeding a new class of crypto treasury entities that use the preferred instrument as their core holding.TERAWULF PRELIMINARY Q1 RESULTS:, TeraWulf(WULF)disclosed preliminary Q1 revenue of $30M–$35M and adjusted EBITDA of $0–$3M, while reporting $3.1B in cash and $5.8B in total debt as of March 31 alongside allocations received under a $250M revolving credit facility. The near-zero EBITDA margin signals that TeraWulf's pivot from bitcoin mining to HPC and AI hosting is still consuming capital despite the large balance sheet.MINERS AND LENDING PLATFORMS:Bitdeer Technologiesprovided an update on its operations, reporting they self-mined 661 BTC in March, a roughly 480% increase year-over-year, reached approximately 70 EH/s of self-mining hashrate, and reported its AI Cloud annualized run-rate revenue surging 105% month-over-month to approximately $43M, with colocation tenant negotiations underway at its Tydal, Norway data center. Canaan(CAN)revealed its March 2026 bitcoin production, hashrate, treasury holdings, and power cost metrics in itsregular operating update. Antalpha Platform Holding(ANTA), the bitcoin-collateralized institutional lender,reported Q1 financial resultsagainst its prior guidance of $20M–$23M in revenue.MORGAN STANLEY BITCOIN TRUST AND ETF FLOWS:Morgan Stanley's(MS)Q1earnings releasewas accompanied by a disclosure that the firm's Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, ticker MSBT, the first U.S. bank-affiliated spot bitcoin ETF at a 0.14% sponsor fee with Coinbase(COIN)and BNY(BK)as custodians, is now live. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs attracted $411M in net inflows on Tuesday, the second-highest single-day inflow of April, led by BlackRock's(BLK)IBIT at $214M and ARK/21Shares ARKB at $113M, with total ETF NAV standing at approximately $96.6B.ETORO ACQUIRES ZENGO:eToro Group(ETOR)entered a definitive agreement to acquire Zengo, a multi-party computation-based self-custodial crypto wallet with more than 2M users, for approximately $70M, deepening eToro's on-chain infrastructure and enabling support for tokenized assets, prediction markets, and perpetual contracts,according to a company press release.OKX EUROPEAN DERIVATIVES LAUNCH:OKXlaunchedMiFID-regulated perpetual-style crypto derivatives, branded X-Perps, for retail and institutional traders across the European Economic Area through its Malta-regulated subsidiary, offering up to 10x leverage on bitcoin, ether, solana, XRP, and seven additional pairs.CRYPTO TAX COMPLIANCE:With the first year of mandatory Form 1099-DA broker reporting in effect, a survey finds 52% of crypto investors fear IRS penalties on the April 15 tax deadline, placing Coinbase and Kraken at the center of compliance scrutiny,The Street reported.ON-CHAIN FLOWS AND DERIVATIVES:shows the Royal Government of Bhutan's sovereign fund, Druk Holding & Investments, transferred another 250 BTC, approximately $18.46M, explicitly flagged for sale on April 15, continuing a systematic 2026 liquidation program in which total outflows now exceed $233M year-to-date, with holdings having fallen roughly 70% from a peak of approximately 13,000 BTC in October 2024 to approximately 3,774 BTC remaining.Separately, a wallet dormant for approximately 14.5 years, holding 3,000 BTC originally acquired at roughly 37c each, transferred 500 BTC, worth approximately $37M, to a new address, leaving 2,359 BTC in the wallet in what may represent a staged liquidation. On Hyperliquid, a tracked whale address, which flipped 20x short for roughly $80M notional on April 8, reversed course and opened new 20x leveraged long positions on 269 bitcoin and 8,586 ether at approximately $19.92M each, a directional pivot by an address with a 63.83% win rate and $5.17M in cumulative profits across 47 trades over two months. Total network liquidations in the prior 24 hours reached approximately $435M, with shorts liquidated at $223M slightly outpacing longs at $212M, including $91.2M in bitcoin short liquidations, a pattern consistent with a short squeeze in progress.Movement was spotted in Geminiwallets. Winklevoss Capital transferred 572 BTC, valued at approximately $42.8M,from a Gemini hot wallet into cold custody after the wallet balance hit its lowest recorded level, signaling a repositioning of reserves.PRICE ACTION:As of time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $73,675.32, while ether was trading at $2,324.97,according to price data from TipRanks.
