Morgan Stanley investment funds have acquired over 6.5 million shares in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) as large financial institutions eye ways to give their clients exposure to the nascent cryptocurrency sector.

Since July, total assets under management (AUM) across all digital asset investment products has increased 57.3% to $54.8 billion as the market recovers. Bitcoin-focused products saw their AUM rise 51.9% to $38.1 billion, however, they lost market share and now represent 69.6% of the total.

Microsoft has been awarded a U.S. patent for software that can help users create applications on the blockchain by making it easier and more efficient to create tokens for different networks.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Morgan Stanley Buys 6.5 Million Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Shares
• Crypto Investment Products’ Total AUM Surges to $54.8 Billion
• Microsoft Awarded U.S. Patent on Crypto Token Creation Service
• Crypto Market Movers – AVAX, XTZ, CELO

Morgan Stanley Buys 6.5 Million Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Shares

Morgan Stanley investment funds have acquired over 6.5 million shares in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) as large financial institutions eye ways to give their clients exposure to the nascent cryptocurrency sector.

According to SEC filings Morgan Stanley invested in GBTC across more than a dozen funds. Its Morgan Stanley Insight Fund, an equity growth fund that manages $8 billion in assets, picked up over 900,000 shares in GBTC worth $27.6 million, while the bank’s Discovery Portfolio bought around 600,000 shares. Its VIF Growth Portfolio holds 130,000.

The firm’s largest GBTC holder is its Growth Portfolio, which has 2.3 million shares. Morgan Stanley’s shares were purchased in June, when BTC was hovering around the $30,000 mark and GBTC shares were trading close to the $30 mark.

Crypto Investment Products’ Total AUM Surges to $54.8 Billion

Since July, total assets under management (AUM) across all digital asset investment products has increased 57.3% to $54.8 billion as the market recovers. Bitcoin-focused products saw their AUM rise 51.9% to $38.1 billion, however, they lost market share and now represent 69.6% of the total.

As detailed in the August edition of CryptoCompare’s Digital Asset Management Review, Ethereum’s AUM rose 72.8% to $13.8 billion, while baskets increased 67.8% to $2.3 billion. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and Exchange-traded notes (ENS) both saw large increases of 79.1% and 91.4% respectively.

Average daily aggregate product volumes rose 46.6% to $544 million. The average daily volume for GBTC, the investment trust bought by Morgan Stanley, stood at $240 million after rising 17.4%, while Grayscale’s Ether investment product saw its average daily volume rise 105.9% to $193.3 million.

Microsoft Awarded U.S. Patent on Crypto Token Creation Service

Microsoft has been awarded a U.S. patent for software that can help users create applications on the blockchain by making it easier and more efficient to create tokens for different networks.

The patent says creating and managing tokens is currently “difficult and cumbersome,” due to a lack of standardization across different blockchains. Microsoft’s patent describes a blockchain-independent system for helping users create tokens and manage them across networks.

On user requests, the system would offer a user template with various attributes on the type of tokens to be created. The software would provide a common interface for managing tokens, so developers wouldn’t have to worry about token-specific code to interact with them.

Crypto Market Movers – AVAX, XTZ, CELO

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Avalanche (AVAX) - Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized finance applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one interoperable, highly scalable ecosystem. Developers who build on Avalanche can easily create applications and custom blockchain networks with complex rulesets or build on existing private or public subnets.

Tezos (XTZ) - Tezos is a new decentralized blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth. It facilitates formal verification, a technique that mathematically proves the correctness of the code governing transactions and boosts the security of the most sensitive or financially weighted smart contracts.

Celo (CELO) - CELO is a utility and governance asset for the Celo community, which has a fixed supply and variable value. With CELO, users can help shape the direction of the Celo Platform. Celo's mission is to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity for everyone.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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