Morgan Stanley Opens Sandboxed Digital Asset Lab to Test Stablecoins, Tokenized Deposits and DeFi Vaults
Morgan Stanley Opens Sandboxed Digital Asset Lab to Test Stablecoins, Tokenized Deposits and DeFi Vaults #
Morgan Stanley has set up a Digital Asset Lab where staff can experiment with stablecoins, tokenized deposits, central bank digital currencies and decentralized finance applications in a controlled environment isolated from the bank’s live systems, Bloomberg reported on 29 September.
The lab is part of Morgan Stanley’s existing innovation network, which spans facilities in New York, Glasgow and Bangalore totalling roughly 20,000 square feet, described as resembling data centres. Megan Brewer, who leads market innovation and labs at the firm, said as many as 270 projects run through those facilities each year. The Digital Asset Lab is a new addition focused on blockchain-based financial technology.
Amy Oldenburg, head of Morgan Stanley’s digital-asset team, said the facility would provide “a secure, compliant and segregated environment” to test new areas of digital assets before any technology interacts with core banking infrastructure. She named DeFi vaults as an area of particular interest while noting the technology is too early-stage for production deployment. Tokenized deposits, tokenized money-market funds and central bank digital currencies are also on the testing agenda.
The lab sits alongside digital-asset products the bank already offers. Morgan Stanley currently provides crypto trading through its E*TRADE platform and has launched investment products tracking Bitcoin, Ether and Solana. Earlier in 2026, Morgan Stanley Investment Management introduced the Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio, ticker MSNXX, a fund designed to hold backing assets for stablecoin issuers seeking to comply with the US GENIUS Act.
The sandboxed structure follows a pattern among large banks of testing blockchain-based tools in isolation before connecting them to client-facing systems. Brewer said the model lets teams learn and build while giving the bank data to inform its decisions rather than relying on assumption.
Morgan Stanley oversees more than $10 trillion in client assets and is among Wall Street’s largest wealth managers. The firm has not set a timeline for moving any technology tested in the lab to a production or client-facing environment.
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