TechFlow News, March 25: According to a CoinDesk report, Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Morgan Stanley, stated at the New York Digital Assets Summit that major Wall Street banks’ entry into the cryptocurrency space is not driven by fear of missing out, but rather the result of years-long efforts to modernize financial infrastructure.
Oldenburg noted that Morgan Stanley’s digital asset strategy spans multiple layers—including trading, asset management, and infrastructure. The bank plans to enable tokenized stock trading on its Alternative Trading System (ATS) in the second half of 2026; this platform currently handles equities, ETFs, and American Depositary Receipts (ADRs).
Internally, the bank is overhauling its core systems—many of which are decades old—to support faster settlement and continuous trading. Oldenburg emphasized that financial institutions’ systems are far more complex than startups anticipate, and no single institution can independently complete such modernization; instead, it requires coordinated collaboration across the entire global financial network.
