The Morning Minute is a daily newspaper written by Taylor Warner. The analyzes and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Decrypt. Join the Morning Minute In the substack.
GM!
Today’s Top News:
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Crypto Majors Rally Ahead of Monday’s Reversal; BTC +2% to $67.4k
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Uniswap has completely denied the lawsuit claiming damages for the fraudulent tokens
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BTC ETFs shed $458M in net inflows on Monday
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Sellers ($200M) and Tom Lee ($100M) continue to buy BTC and ETH
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Clashy and Polymarket may be banned in Nevada after federal court says federal law doesn’t preempt state law
In the past week, three of the world’s largest banks have made moves to ban cryptocurrencies.
Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Barclays all made crypto-related announcements in the past week.
Morgan Stanley filed an application with the OCC for a National Trust Bank charter on February 18. The proposed entity, Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, a national association, will offer custody, trading, exchange, staking, and issuance of Stalkcoin under a federally regulated roof. The company’s head of digital assets, Amy Oldenburg, confirmed at the Bitcoin for Corporations conference on February 25 that the bank wants to bring bitcoin trading, lending, yields, and custody in-house.
Citigroup has announced that it will launch the Basic Bitcoin Decentralized this year, allowing customers to keep BTC in the same safe accounts they use for stocks, bonds, and cash. Citi’s Nisha Surendran, who led the product’s development, called it “Bitcoin bankable.”
Barclays has separately sent RFIs to tech providers to support its blockchain payment platform stablecoins and marked reserves, with the target of vendor selection in April. The bank already owns a stake in Ubyx, a stablecoin startup close to Tether.
“We will offer our customers a single service model across crypto, securities and money.” Citi’s Nisha Surendran said.
Oldenburg on Morgan Stanley’s approach: “We can’t just rent the technology to do it. People expect Morgan Stanley — they trust our brand — to do nothing wrong.”
Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, reacts broadly: “People are going to be surprised this year. The world’s biggest institutions and companies are coming full circle to crypto.”
Morgan Stanley has $8T in AUM.
A significant chunk of its customer base already owns a crypto-off platform. They are betting that a portion of these buyers will bring these properties home.
And Trust Bank’s structure means Morgan Stanley can hold client assets, run staking verifiers, issue stablecoins, and facilitate the trading of commodity assets, competing directly with Coinbase custody, BitGo and Anchorage.
Citi’s version is about cross-margining. Clients will be able to pledge crypto against traditional positions in the same account structure. This changes the securities game for institutions that run crypto alongside equities and fixed income.
What makes this story different from every “Banks Are Coming” headline cycle before it: They’re actually here now, and writing deeply.
There are now concurrent OCC charter applications from Morgan Stanley, Coinbase, Stripe Property Bridge, Crypto.com, and Global Liberty Financial. The OCC processed an average of fewer than four new charter applications per year between 2011 and 2024. Only in 2025 and 2026, 14 have been registered.
So what does it all mean?
Well it’s hard to imagine that these TradFi giants will continue to try to bring crypto in-house if they think the industry is going to zero. Their adoption is a signal that they see what was once a frontier technology as maturing.
This is a hat. Now we just need to be patient and let the bull case begin…
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Crypto Majors Are Green After Big Gains On Monday; BTC +2% to $67.4k; ETH +2% at $1,968; SOL +1% on $84
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almost (+11%), CHZ (+9%), Morpho (+7%) and Virtual (+7%) are the leading movers
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Stock futures Concerns over an 8 percent increase in oil prices and an escalation in Iran’s long-running war have deepened.
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Bitcoin It briefly hit $70K on Monday amid the US-Iran conflict before turning back, with other majors ETH, Solana, and HYPE all posting big gains before pulling back.
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CRCL Repository Gained 15% on Monday, now up nearly 60% since last week’s Q4 earnings call
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A new deal on the construction of the House of the Senate Moving forward with a ban on CBDCs, backed by the White House
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change Won a full dismissal of pending state-level claims against them aimed at holding them liable for fraudulent token trading on the protocol
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Chinese banks Accounts of users who mention “Bitcoin,” “Dogecoin” or “USDT” in wire transfer memos are being frozen, China Construction Bank customers report with no way to unfreeze.
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Bitcoin’s BIP-110 Governance Struggle On Monday, mining pool Ocean produced the first block signaling support for a temporary soft fork targeting non-currency data.
Senate boosts housing bill with CBDC ban, drawing support from White House
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Bitcoin ETFs Monday saw $458M in net inflows, with ETH ETFs seeing $38.7M
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Strategy Last week 3,015 BTC were bought for $204M at an average price of $67,700, bringing total holdings to 720,737 BTC.
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Tom Lee’s Batman Added 50,928 ETH worth $98M last week, bringing total reserves to 4.47 million ETH (3.71% of supply); The company now has a stake of 3M ETH, generating an annual revenue of $172M
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Original scientific $175M in Bitcoin sold in January as it moves into AI data centers
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Mimi majors were mostly red; DOGE -1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -0.2%, TRUMP -1%, PENGU +2%, SPX +1%, FARTCOIN +5%
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War (+33%) Jellygelly (+24%), and Punch (+20%) led significant movers in Solana
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VVV symbol It briefly jumped 30% to nearly $8 on Monday before settling at $6.75 ($295M); After this move FAI jumped 120% to $26M
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Kalshi and Polymarket Businesses in Nevada are at risk of being shut down after a federal court sent their latest dispute back to state court, saying the Commodity Exchange Act does not preempt state law.
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The CFTC Crypto advocate David Miller has been named to lead its enforcement division; Miller previously represented hedge funds and crypto clients at Greenberg Trig and served as a federal prosecutor in the SDNY.
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bybit Shared that AI-powered onchain monitoring helped users recover $300 million in losses by 2025 and help defend against attacks
The court order raises the risk of a Nevada business ban for Kalashi, the polymarket
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NFT leaders There was little red; Pinx even at 29.9 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.44 ETH, BAYC -2% at 5.86 ETH; Hypurr’s -1% at 455 HYPE
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Not significant High movers
(tags translation) Morgan Stanley
