Former Morgan Stanley Executive Says Crypto Will Change the Financial System – Future of Money?

John Mack, a former CEO at the major US-headquartered investment bank Morgan Stanley, suggests that bitcoin (BTC) and crypto may become a part of the increasingly digitized world of trading – and many of us may live to see it.

Talking to CNBC about whether Wall Street would become digitized in the future, Mack said that he does not think “it goes away,” but that it will change “dramatically.”

“Take crypto. It’s hard for me to understand why does it have value,” he said and added:

“So 50 years from now, maybe that will be a huge way that monetary transactions take place.”

Crypto is easy to wire, Mack argued. As everything is online, people don’t need to worry about putting their money in banks, but “you got to make sure it’s insulated, protected, and no one can break into it,” he stated.

That said, he went on to suggest that, in the not-so-distant future, crypto and digitization in the world of trading may be the norm.

“Fifty years from now, I think things will be even more electronic and driven more and more by input from humans in the computers on how to trade, how to take risks, and to make sure they don’t go over their limits.”

Mack has been a crypto investor for a while now. Asked if he still owns any bitcoin, he replied: “I do.”

Among his investments, he shared that through his family office, “we have some outright positions in crypto.”

Mack is a senior advisor to the investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the former CEO and Chairman of the board at Morgan Stanley. He had been in the CEO position at the bank from 2005 until 2010, and Chairman from 2005 until 2012. Between 2001 and 2004, he served as the CEO of the global investment bank Credit Suisse.

You can watch the interview here:

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley itself entered the crypto game a while back. For example, in March 2021, it announced its plans to offer three bitcoin funds to its rich clients.

Just recently, as reported in October, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman was less critical of crypto than some of his fellow investment banking executives. “I don’t think crypto is a fad. I don’t think it’s going to go away,” Gorman said during an earnings call. “I don’t know what the value of bitcoin should or shouldn’t be. But these things aren’t going away,” the CEO said.

Furthermore, twelve institutional funds, managed by Morgan Stanley, may have had exposure to bitcoin indirectly through cash-settled futures or through investments in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the bank said in a filing on March 31.

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