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Morgan Stanley wealth advisors can pitch bitcoin ETFs

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Morgan Stanley on Friday told its army of financial advisors that it will soon allow them to offer bitcoin ETFs to some clients, a first among major Wall Street banks, CNBC has learned.

The firm’s 15,000 or so financial advisors can solicit eligible clients to purchase shares of two exchange-traded bitcoin funds starting Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the policy.

Those funds are BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, the people said.

The move from Morgan Stanley, one of the world’s largest wealth management firms, is the latest sign of the adoption of bitcoin by mainstream finance. In January, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved applications for 11 spot bitcoin ETFs, heralding the arrival of an investment vehicle for bitcoin that is easier to access, cheaper to own and more readily traded.

Bitcoin has weathered market sell-offs, the spectacular collapse of crypto exchange FTX and criticism from the most established figures in finance including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

So it’s not surprising that Wall Street’s major wealth management businesses didn’t immediately embrace the new ETFs, forbidding their financial advisors from pitching them and only allowing trades if clients actively sought out the product.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo still follow that policy, according to spokespeople at the four banks.

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Correction: Private funds from Galaxy and FS NYDIG that Morgan Stanley made available starting in 2021 were phased out earlier this year. An earlier version of this story included inaccurate information from Morgan Stanley sources about the company’s crypto investment offerings.

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Warner Bros. Discovery, Tesla, Robinhood, IonQ and more

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Robinhood shares drop after the online brokerage fails to get the nod to join the S&P 500

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People wait in line for T-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an initial public offering earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Robinhood shares sold off on Monday as the online brokerage was snubbed in the latest quarterly rebalance of the S&P 500 Index after months of speculation that it could earn a coveted spot in the benchmark.

Shares of Robinhood dropped nearly 5% in premarket trading. The stock has rallied 3.3% Friday to bring last week’s gain to over 13% before the S&P Dow Jones Indices said after the bell that the S&P 500 would remain unchanged.

Just last week, Bank of America called Robinhood a top candidate to join the S&P 500 during the big reshuffling in June. The S&P 500 rebalance, which typically comes on the third Friday of the last month in a quarter, is usually an impactful event as it can spark billions of dollars of trading and spur passive funds to snap up its shares. Companies being added to the index can generally expect funds like that to buy huge amounts of their shares in the coming weeks.

Crypto exchange Coinbase was the latest beneficiary of such an inclusion. The stock skyrocketed 24% in the next trading session following the announcement last month.

Still, Robinhood has had a major comeback this year so far with shares doubling in price. The online brokerage’s shares hit a fresh record high last week amid a rebound in both stocks and crypto. The company had fallen out of favor after the GameStop trading mania of 2021 fizzled and the collapse of FTX triggered a sell-off in digital assets.

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UK’s FCA teams up with Nvidia to let banks experiment with AI

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Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

LONDON — Britain’s financial services watchdog on Monday announced a new tie-up with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to let banks safely experiment with artificial intelligence.

The Financial Conduct Authority said it will launch a so-called Supercharged Sandbox that will “give firms access to better data, technical expertise and regulatory support to speed up innovation.”

Starting from October, financial services institutions in the U.K. will be allowed to experiment with AI using Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI Enterprise Software products, the watchdog said in a press release.

The initiative is designed for firms in the “discovery and experiment phase” with AI, the FCA noted, adding that a separate live testing service exists for firms further along in AI development.

“This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so,” Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer, said in a statement. “We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth.”

The FCA’s new sandbox addresses a key issue for banks, which have faced challenges shipping advanced new AI tools to their customers amid concerns over risks around privacy and fraud.

Large language models from the likes of OpenAI and Google send data back to overseas facilities — and privacy regulators have raised the alarm over how this information is stored and processed. There have meanwhile been several instances of malicious actors using generative AI to scam people.

Nvidia is behind the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to train and run powerful AI models. The company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, is expected to give a keynote talk at a tech conference in London on Monday morning.

Last year, HSBC’s generative AI lead, Edward Achtner, told a London tech conference he sees “a lot of success theater” in finance when it comes to artificial intelligence — hinting that some financial services firms are touting advances in AI without tangible product innovations to show for it.

He added that, while banks like HSBC have used AI for many years, new generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT come with their own unique compliance risks.

Zopa CEO: Fintechs face challenges when it comes to scaling in the UK

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