Morgan Stanley's spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, ticker MSBT, has drawn significant attention on Wall Street since its launch on April 8, 2026. Now, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has identified and publicly labeled three on-chain custody addresses supporting the ETF, enabling anyone to track the fund's Bitcoin holdings in near real-time.
Arkham Identifies MSBT Custody Addresses
According to an investigation report published by Arkham, its internal analysis team pinpointed three Bitcoin addresses linked to MSBT's custodians, Coinbase and BNY Mellon. As of approximately April 18, 2026, these addresses held a total of 1,348 BTC, valued at roughly $102 million based on Bitcoin prices between $75,700 and $76,000. However, Morgan Stanley's own website disclosed holdings of 1,820.60 BTC as of April 17, suggesting Arkham may not have identified all associated addresses.
Arkham announced the labeling on X (formerly Twitter), noting that MSBT had purchased approximately $83.6 million worth of Bitcoin since inception and held $64.4 million in its on-chain addresses at that time. Holdings have since grown.
ETF Launch Details: Lowest Fee and Strong Start
MSBT began trading on NYSE Arca on April 8, 2026, making Morgan Stanley the first major U.S. bank to issue a spot Bitcoin ETF. The firm manages roughly $9.3 trillion in client assets. The ETF's expense ratio is just 0.14%, the lowest among all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, undercutting BlackRock's IBIT at 0.25%. On its first trading day, MSBT saw approximately $34 million in volume, ranking in the top 1% of ETF launches over the prior year, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. After about five days of trading, net assets reached approximately $87 million.
Real-Time Tracking Brings Transparency
Spot Bitcoin ETFs operate on a T+1 settlement cycle, meaning on-chain transfers typically appear about a day after public creation or redemption announcements. Arkham's dashboard reflects these flows once the blockchain confirms the transaction, offering near real-time visibility. The three labeled addresses carry partial public prefixes: bc1qa…, bc1qe…, and bc1qn…. They are grouped into a single entity page on Arkham, showing aggregate balances, inflow/outflow charts, and full transaction history.
Recent documented inflows include a transfer of 177.757 BTC (approximately $13.75 million) arriving about 23 hours before publication, and a deposit of 209.296 BTC (approximately $15.47 million) recorded three days earlier. Multiple other deposits ranging from 80 to 415 BTC were recorded during the fund's first two weeks. No significant outflows have been observed.
Transparency Wave: A Window into TradFi's Bitcoin Stack
Arkham has previously tracked Coinbase custody wallets, Grayscale wallets, and BlackRock's IBIT-related addresses. The U.S. government entity page on the platform shows over 328,000 BTC in seized assets. The labeling of Morgan Stanley's MSBT addresses provides an unprecedented real-time window into a Wall Street institution's Bitcoin accumulation — a view that previously required waiting for regulatory filings. Retail and institutional observers can now see inflows and outflows from the same screen.
Arkham's platform now covers more than 450,000 entity pages and billions of address labels across exchanges, governments, asset managers, DeFi protocols, and individual wallets. The research article detailing the identification methodology was published on April 17, 2026, further enhancing market transparency.