Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, January 13th, and today we are entering phase two of institutional adoption. Before we get into that, however, if you're enjoying the show, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod.

So far this year, markets have been a little directionless.

We've seen a ton of big catalyst already, but Bitcoin has largely been trading sideways.

However, 2026 seems to be another big year for institutional adoption.

The big headline was Morgan Stanley filing for a Bitcoin ETF, signaling and desire to put wealth management clients into their own product.

But we've also had dozens of minor headlines pointing in the same direction.

In a recent note, Binance Research framed this year as the beginning of round two for

institutional adoption. They viewed round one as the period where major financial institutions

served solely as distribution channels. That era was marked by the launch of the Bitcoin

ETFs, which allowed customers to get access, but didn't necessarily speak to a deeper

strategy. For most of that era, the major investment banks had banned their advisors from

putting clients in Bitcoin, so the sole focus was arm's-length distribution. That stance began

to change late last year when we started seeing more interesting and diverse products being

launched. Chief among them was J.P. Morgan's structured Bitcoin notes. These securities gave capped upside

exposure to Bitcoin's price while providing some downside protection. The product signaled

that sophisticated investors were looking for more control over how they include Bitcoin in a

portfolio. Binance's note highlighted that Morgan Stanley has triggered an acceleration of the next

phase of institutional adoption. They write,

This front-running behavior is expected to force competitors like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan

to follow suit to avoid falling behind in this emerging asset management lane.

...