There’s a sentiment from a few corners of the market that crypto has been deep in a bear cycle for some time now. It just hasn’t looked that way because the institutional money that arrived in a big way a few years ago didn’t do what retail money usually does. It stayed.
The behaviour of institutional investors signals something worth paying attention to. Smart money enters at opportune moments and reassesses based on outlook. Everyday investors tend to pile in when prices spike and panic-sell when they drop. These are not the same animal.
The latest proof point is Morgan Stanley. The investment bank has launched MSBT, notably the first time a US bank-affiliated asset manager has offered a crypto exchange-traded product. It joins a growing shelf of similar products, with BlackRock’s IBIT the dominant one. What distinguishes MSBT isn’t the structure but the distribution muscle behind it.
Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst, calls it ‘boomer candy’ as a compliment of sorts
When Morgan Stanley’s roughly 16,000 financial advisers recommend MSBT, it doesn’t land as one option on a comparison table. It arrives as a recommendation from a trusted adviser to a client. That’s an entirely different kind of endorsement, and a different kind of market reach. Consider that MSBT attracted over $100m in net inflows during its first week of trading after its debut on April 8.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs last week filed for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, a structurally different ETF from the rest. The fund holds bitcoin ETF exposure and then sells call options on those positions. Buyers of those options pay Goldman a premium for the right to benefit if bitcoin rises above a certain price.
Goldman collects those premiums and passes them to fund investors as regular income distributions. The trade-off is straightforward: you receive steady payments but surrender meaningful gains if bitcoin has one of its characteristically dramatic runs.
Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst, calls it “boomer candy” as a compliment of sorts. These are products, he suggests, that are irresistible to investors who want bitcoin exposure but are willing to give up some of that upside for lower volatility and a reliable income stream. It’s not for the crypto diehard. It’s for a client with substantial capital who finds the asset compelling but is wary of volatility.
One has to wonder, could something similar take shape on local soil? South Africa has more than 41,000 dollar millionaires, according to the Henley & Partners Africa Wealth Report 2025, while research shows that only 6%-7% of crypto holders in the country are older than 55. That gap between capital and participation is either a problem or an opportunity, depending on whether the right products exist to bridge it.
De Wit is country manager for Luno South Africa
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