Arkham Intelligence has publicly labeled the custody wallets associated with Morgan Stanley’s spot Bitcoin ETF, MSBT, giving market participants a new way to monitor the fund’s onchain Bitcoin activity with near real-time visibility. The move adds a layer of transparency to a Wall Street product that would otherwise be tracked mainly through official filings and fund disclosures.
Three labeled wallets linked to MSBT custody
According to Arkham, its internal research team identified three onchain wallet addresses connected to the custodians supporting MSBT, namely Coinbase and BNY Mellon. Those addresses were then grouped and published under verified entity labels on Arkham’s platform.
As of around April 18, 2026, the three wallets held a combined 1,348 BTC. Based on a Bitcoin price range of roughly $75,700 to $76,000, those holdings were worth about $102.08 million. Arkham said users can now follow the ETF’s Bitcoin accumulation and wallet movements through its live dashboard as transactions settle onchain.
The firm also noted in a post on X that, at an earlier point, MSBT had purchased about $83.6 million worth of Bitcoin since launch, while its visible onchain addresses held around $64.4 million. The holdings have increased since then, suggesting continued inflows into the fund during its early trading period.
Recent inflows show steady accumulation
Arkham’s wallet data highlighted several notable inbound transfers. One deposit of approximately 177.757 BTC, valued at about $13.75 million, arrived roughly 23 hours before publication. Another transfer of around 209.296 BTC, worth approximately $15.47 million, was recorded three days earlier.
Additional deposits ranging from 80 BTC to 415 BTC were also seen during the ETF’s first two weeks. The report said there had been no significant outflows at the time, reinforcing the picture of early-stage accumulation rather than redemptions or asset rotation.
Because spot Bitcoin ETFs operate on a T+1 settlement cycle, onchain transfers usually appear about one day after public creation or redemption activity is disclosed. Arkham’s dashboard reflects those flows once they are settled and recorded on the blockchain, offering what is effectively a near real-time view of fund-related movements.
Morgan Stanley enters the US spot Bitcoin ETF market
MSBT launched on April 8, 2026 on NYSE Arca, making Morgan Stanley the first major US bank to issue a spot Bitcoin ETF. That milestone is significant in itself, given the bank’s scale and reach across traditional finance. The source article said Morgan Stanley oversees approximately $9.3 trillion in client assets, placing MSBT directly in front of a broad TradFi audience.
Before Arkham’s labeling, there was no comparable public onchain tracking tool for this particular product. With the addition of labeled wallet data, traders, analysts, and institutional observers can now watch Bitcoin inflows and holdings tied to the ETF from a single interface rather than relying only on delayed disclosures.
Low fee structure strengthens MSBT’s positioning
MSBT launched with an expense ratio of 0.14%, which the report described as the lowest among major US spot Bitcoin ETFs. For comparison, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) charges 0.25%. The lower fee may help Morgan Stanley compete more aggressively for assets in a crowded ETF market where cost, issuer brand, and liquidity all matter.
Early trading metrics also drew attention. On its first trading day, MSBT posted about $34 million in volume and ranked among the top 1% of all ETF launches over the prior year, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. After roughly five trading days, the fund’s net assets had climbed to about $87 million.
Those figures, combined with visible onchain inflows, suggest the launch was closely watched by both crypto-native participants and traditional market investors looking for regulated Bitcoin exposure through a major banking brand.
Public wallet tracking does not necessarily show the full picture
Despite the value of Arkham’s labels, the tracked wallet balances may not represent the ETF’s complete Bitcoin holdings. The source noted that Morgan Stanley’s own website listed 1,820.60 BTC as of the log date of April 17, 2026, which is higher than the 1,348 BTC visible in Arkham’s labeled addresses.
This gap indicates Arkham may not yet have identified all of the bank’s related addresses. That is an important distinction for anyone using public blockchain data to estimate ETF holdings. Onchain intelligence can reveal a large share of activity, but it may still lag or omit addresses that have not been clustered or verified.
Arkham partially disclosed the prefixes of the three labeled addresses as bc1qa…, bc1qe…, and bc1qn…. These are grouped on a single entity page showing aggregate balances, inflow and outflow charts, and full transaction histories. For analysts, this setup makes it easier to compare wallet activity with official ETF numbers and identify discrepancies or newly emerging addresses over time.
A broader push toward transparency in crypto-linked finance
Arkham said it published a detailed research post on April 17, 2026, explaining the methodology used to identify the MSBT wallets. The company added that its analytics platform now covers more than 450,000 entity pages and billions of address tags spanning exchanges, governments, asset managers, DeFi protocols, and individual wallets.
The firm already tracks custody wallets associated with Coinbase, Grayscale, and BlackRock’s IBIT, while its US government entity page shows more than 328,000 BTC in seized assets. These figures can change as more addresses are labeled and as market prices move, but the overall trend is clear: onchain intelligence is becoming an increasingly important transparency layer for institutions operating in digital assets.
For Morgan Stanley’s MSBT, the practical outcome is straightforward. Retail and institutional observers no longer need to wait solely for regulatory filings to get a sense of the fund’s Bitcoin accumulation. Instead, they can follow much of that activity through blockchain data as it settles, creating a more immediate window into how a major Wall Street institution is building its exposure to Bitcoin.
That does not eliminate the need for official disclosures, especially when not all addresses may be known. But it does mark another step in the convergence of traditional finance and public blockchain transparency, where even large regulated products can increasingly be monitored in a way that was previously unavailable.