Morning Minute: Morgan Stanley Is Coming for Coinbase

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes or less, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall 2-4% despite falling oil, stocks green; BTC -2% at $80.9k
• TON and VVV continue to outperform, ZEC cools off
• Morgan Stanley launches crypto trading on ETrade, undercuts on fees
• CME to launch 24/7 trading for crypto futures and options on May 29
• New quantum report warns Q-day could come as soon as 2030

💸 Morgan Stanley Launches Crypto Trading on ETrade

Morgan Stanley launched spot crypto trading on ETrade at 50 basis points per transaction. At that fee level, they’re effectively undercutting Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab in one move.

The pilot is live now for a limited group of users, with all 8.6 million ETrade clients getting access later this year. Initial assets are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana—the same three Morgan Stanley has ETF filings for. The infrastructure is powered by Zerohash, which Morgan Stanley quietly signed as its crypto rails partner in September.

Robinhood’s spreads typically run 35 to 95 basis points. Coinbase charges 60 basis points. Schwab charges 75 basis points. Morgan Stanley at 50 basis points undercuts all of them. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas commented: “This is why TradFi is no joke and crypto exchanges should be scared.” He added that fee compression will continue until direct crypto trading is “pretty dirt cheap everywhere,” mirroring what Bitcoin ETF expense ratios did before launch.

Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley’s head of wealth management, described the strategy as “disintermediating the disintermediators.” That’s the key takeaway. Morgan Stanley isn’t entering crypto to complement Coinbase—it’s entering to replace it…

🟠 Grant Cardone Says Bitcoin Will Beat REITs

Speaking at Consensus Miami on Wednesday, Grant Cardone disclosed he has added another $100 million in Bitcoin to a $235 million multifamily real estate deal in Boca Raton—his largest single hybrid allocation to date. Cardone Capital’s total Bitcoin exposure now sits at roughly $200 million.

The structure involves property and Bitcoin held inside the same LLC, with rental income used to continuously accumulate more BTC.

As for the advantage over REITs, Cardone commented. “These companies can never, ever hold bitcoin on their balance sheet,” Cardone said. REITs are legally required to distribute more than 90% of taxable income as dividends and cannot hold currency on their balance sheet. Cardone Capital, structured as private LLCs, faces no such constraint.

He projected a combined return of “somewhere between 22 and 32 percent” from the hybrid model, arguing that the real estate cash flow removes the structural vulnerability that pure Bitcoin treasury companies face—the need to sell BTC or issue debt during downturns. “If bitcoin goes to zero, I’m not getting rid of the real estate,” he said.

Cardone’s longer-term target is 10,000 BTC accumulated through rental income alone, with a planned 2026 IPO of a publicly traded Bitcoin-real estate treasury company. If he can generate those 22-32% returns, one thing is certain—demand will be high…

🏛️ The White House Wants the Clarity Act Signed by July 4

White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt gave the clearest timeline yet for the Clarity Act at Consensus Miami on Wednesday—July 4th.

He outlined a plan including Senate Banking Committee markup this month, four working Senate weeks in June for a floor vote, and then a House vote before Independence Day. “I think that would be a tremendous birthday present for America, celebrating our 250th,” Witt said.

Witt confirmed the stablecoin yield compromise between Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks is “closed.” Both crypto firms and banks are dissatisfied with the language, confirmation the right compromise was reached.

On the ethics provision that Democrats have pushed, the White House said it supports “common sense rules” that apply “across the board” rather than targeting any single officeholder. That’s the language designed to thread the needle on the Trump family crypto interests without sinking the bill.

Prediction markets didn’t move on the news, with the odds of the bill passing in 2026 holding at 65%.

🤖 Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Now Powering Claude

Anthropic announced a deal with SpaceX to use the full compute capacity of Colossus 1 (SpaceX’s flagship data center in Memphis), giving Anthropic access to more than 300 megawatts of computing capacity and over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs.

The deal is immediate, unlike Anthropic’s capacity expansions with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, which don’t come online until late 2026 or 2027.

The partnership comes as a surprise as Musk has been openly critical of Anthropic for months, posting in February that the company “hates Western civilization” and calling it “misanthropic.” But perhaps his hatred of OpenAI outweighs his disdain for Claude.

The deal happened after Musk spent a week in Oakland federal court testifying in his OpenAI lawsuit, and apparently meeting with senior Anthropic staff in parallel. He commented: “Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about doing the right thing. No one set off my evil detector.”

Anthropic said the deal will directly improve capacity for Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers, removing peak hour restrictions and raising API rate limits for Opus models. Bigger picture—Anthropic expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity.

Data centers in space, powered by SpaceX launch infrastructure, are the endgame.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red down 2-4%; BTC -2% at $80.9k; ETH -4% at $2,330; SOL flat at $89; HYPE -4% at $42.9
• VVV (+11%), ICP (+10%) and TON (+9%) led top movers
• Oil -1% at $92; Gold +1% at $4,735
• Stock futures are flat premarket
• The CME Group will offer crypto futures and options around the clock starting May 29, extending its digital asset derivatives trading to a 24/7 schedule for the first time
• A new quantum report from Project Eleven warned that Q-day is likely by 2033 and possibly as early as 2030
• OKX announced perpetual futures tied to OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic valuations, with synthetic price exposure with no equity rights or issuer approval
• Bermuda Premier David Burt announced another USDC airdrop to residents tied to next week’s Bermuda Digital Finance Forum, alongside onboarding local merchants to accept stablecoin payments; the government is working with Coinbase and Circle to build the world’s first fully onchain national economy
• ICE, OKX, and Securitize executives warned at Consensus Miami that offshore synthetic tokenized stocks use public company names without issuer approval and don’t represent real equity
• Tokenized US treasuries on Ethereum have doubled over the past 6 months, now at $8B

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $46M in net inflows on Wednesday, now on a 5-day inflow streak; the ETH ETFs saw $11.5M in inflows
• Grayscale completed Q1 rebalancing on its DeFi and Smart Contract funds, swapping out Aero for Ethena, with current holdings now UNI, AAVE, ONDO, ENA, CRV, and LDO

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were red; DOGE -5%, SHIB -3%, PEPE -1%, PENGU -6%, TRUMP -2%, BONK flat, SPX -1%, FARTCOIN +1%
• USDUC (+300%), Hanta (+750%), Tokabu (+33%) and 67 (+50%) led notable movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• OpenTrade raised $17 million led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital with a16z Crypto participating; the London-based platform lets fintechs plug institutional stablecoin yield into their products without building their own custody infrastructure
• Hyperliquid traders have record net long exposure for 2026, growing steadily over the past 2 months

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders are slightly red on the day; Punks even at 31 ETH, BAYC -1% at 9.85 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 5.28 ETH; Hypurr’s -1% at 340 HYPE
• Slonks (+750%), Normies (+17%) and Rilato (+94%) led notable movers; Gift of Time up 15%
• Sam Spratt’s Masks of Luci jumped to an 8 ETH floor, up 40% on the week