NEW YORK — Amy Oldenburg, head of digital asset strategy at Morgan Stanley (MS), dismissed the notion that Wall Street is only now adopting crypto out of fear of missing out, emphasizing that major banks have been preparing for this shift over many years.

«TradFi isn’t jumping in because of FOMO — that’s not accurate,» Oldenburg stated during a panel at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday. «We’ve spent years modernizing financial infrastructure from the ground up.»

Her remarks follow a broader trend in which major U.S. banks, historically cautious or slow to enter the crypto space, are now expanding their digital asset services. For years, institutions like Morgan Stanley limited involvement to indirect exposure, such as providing affluent clients access to bitcoin BTC $69,304.67 funds.

More recently, the bank has offered spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) through its E*Trade platform and this month filed to launch its own spot bitcoin ETF.

Wider adoption had been hindered by regulatory ambiguity and concerns over custody, compliance, and market infrastructure. However, this position is evolving, and Morgan Stanley has since articulated a clearer digital asset strategy encompassing trading, asset management, and infrastructure development.

Oldenburg noted the bank is preparing to enable tokenized equities trading on its alternative trading system.

«One of our goals for the second half of 2026 is activating our trajectory cross to support tokenized equities later this year,» she said. The platform currently processes equities, ETFs, and American depositary receipts (ADRs), which she views as a natural foundation for expansion.

Internally, the shift demands significant upgrades to legacy systems. «We’re having to relearn what our old infrastructure, pipes, and plumbing actually look like,» Oldenburg explained, highlighting the difficulty of modernizing decades-old financial architecture to support faster settlement and continuous trading.

She also pointed to a disconnect between crypto startups and established financial institutions.

«There are numerous integration points we need to address,» she observed, adding that founders often fail to grasp the complexity of banking systems.

Nevertheless, areas such as stablecoins are gaining momentum as a means to transfer value more quickly and at lower cost than traditional rails.

Oldenburg stressed that progress depends on industry-wide coordination.

«We can’t modernize in isolation,» she said. «This is a deeply interconnected, complex global system.»

Despite subdued token prices, she affirmed that activity and development are ongoing.

«We’re still in the early innings,» Oldenburg concluded, suggesting that while Wall Street’s deeper integration with crypto will be gradual, it is already underway.