Morgan Stanley is now undercutting Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab on Bitcoin and crypto trading fees — and Strike CEO Jack Mallers isn’t worried about it one bit.
Wall Street’s Growing Footprint
The bank recently launched a crypto trading pilot through its E*Trade platform, charging clients 50 basis points per transaction. That’s less than what the biggest US crypto and brokerage platforms charge for standard retail trades.
It’s one of the more concrete signs yet that traditional financial giants are moving deeper into digital asset territory.
But Mallers, whose payments company Strike is built around Bitcoin, pushed back hard against the idea that this trend spells trouble for the asset.
Asked on the What Bitcoin Did podcast whether institutional involvement threatens Bitcoin’s core principles, his answer was short: no.
“If Wall Street getting into Bitcoin kills it, it was never going to be successful in the first place,” Mallers told host Danny Knowles in the episode published Thursday on YouTube.
Bitcoin: Money For Everyone — Including Your Enemies
His argument rests on what he sees as Bitcoin’s foundational promise. The asset, he said, was built on the idea of being money for all people — not just those who share the same politics, values, or background.
He extended that to include rivals and adversaries. A network that claims to be open to everyone can’t logically draw a line at Wall Street, in his view.
Large institutions buying in was always going to happen, Mallers said, because Bitcoin is competing for global capital. He described a future where real estate, fine art, and government debt all lose value relative to Bitcoin as the asset gets increasingly adopted worldwide.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in the US in January 2024 have drawn close to $60 billion in net inflows across 11 funds as of Friday, based on data from Farside.
A Different Concern Among Bitcoiners
Not everyone in the Bitcoin community shares Mallers’ calm. Some argue that concentrated ownership by large institutions creates a different kind of risk — one that plays out through influence, not code.
Venture capitalist and Bitcoiner Nic Carter raised that concern in February. He warned that major institutional holders may eventually grow frustrated with Bitcoin developers over unresolved issues such as quantum computing threats.
According to Carter, those institutions could push to replace the current developers entirely.
“I think the big institutions that now exist in Bitcoin, they will get fed up, and they will fire the devs and put in new devs,” he said.
Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView
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