Morgan Stanley’s Crypto ETF Push Meets Senate Market-Structure Vote

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to vote next week on cryptocurrency market-structure legislation as Morgan Stanley files for a multi-token exchange-traded fund covering Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL). The developments arrive as traditional financial institutions expand their digital-asset exposure and federal lawmakers pursue a definitive regulatory framework for crypto markets in the United States.

The proposed market-structure bill would define oversight boundaries between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It also seeks to establish operational standards for digital asset exchanges, custodians, and token issuers.

Morgan Stanley’s filing builds on the institutional investment framework created in January 2024, when the SEC approved the first batch of spot Bitcoin ETFs. Spot Ether ETF approvals followed in July 2024. Morgan Stanley had previously allowed its network of financial advisors to offer spot Bitcoin funds to qualifying high-net-worth clients, and it is among the first major U.S. wirehouses to pursue direct products covering third-generation blockchain assets such as Solana.

Network activity has continued at high operational volume despite broader market fluctuations. Ethereum reached a record peak of more than 2 million daily transactions after ongoing scalability efforts that included the March 2024 Dencun upgrade, or EIP-4844. The upgrade introduced dedicated data “blobs” intended to significantly reduce transaction execution costs across Layer 2 scaling protocols and mainnet applications.

Telegram disclosed that it sold $450 million worth of Toncoin (TON) over the course of last year. The messaging platform originally launched the Telegram Open Network through a $1.7 billion token presale in 2018. After a 2020 enforcement action and settlement with the SEC required Telegram to return capital to investors and pay an $18.5 million penalty, an open-source developer community known as the TON Foundation continued the underlying blockchain.

Telegram later re-integrated TON-based digital wallet and payment services across its messaging platform. Separately, decentralized derivatives protocol Hyperliquid released an updated product progress map, prompting active speculation among market participants about potential plans for a future network token distribution and community airdrop. Hyperliquid operates as a custom Layer 1 network using a high-throughput order-book structure for perpetual futures trading.

Nike also disclosed a change in its digital-asset strategy, announcing the sale of RTFKT, the Web3 digital fashion and non-fungible token (NFT) studio it acquired in December 2021. The sportswear manufacturer had purchased RTFKT during a surge in corporate interest in virtual goods and digital collectibles.

Following news of the divestment, secondary market trading volume for RTFKT’s flagship 3D avatar project, Clone X, rose sharply. Clone X was originally created in collaboration with contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, and its floor price jumped by 250 percent.

Against the backdrop of the Senate vote, institutional filings, corporate realignments, and network milestones, cryptocurrency prices recorded broad losses in the market’s first general downturn of 2026.

* **Bitcoin (BTC)** fell 2 percent, declining to $92,000.
* **XRP** led losses among large-cap digital currencies, dropping 5 percent to trade at $2.24.
* **Ethereum (ETH)** dropped 1 percent, sliding to $3,210.
* **Solana (SOL)** pulled back 1 percent, settling at $138.