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- 🐳 Weekly Edition: A16Z Raises $15B to Win AI and Crypto, Morgan Stanley Files for Crypto ETFs
🐳 Weekly Edition: A16Z Raises $15B to Win AI and Crypto, Morgan Stanley Files for Crypto ETFs
Crypto continues to become more ingrained into the global economy, and 2026 is on track to be one of our biggest years yet
Will McKinnon & Beluga
January 09, 2026
After an explosive start to the week the markets have cooled down, albeit Bitcoin ending today over $90k is undoubtedly a good thing. While most altcoins still lack momentum, we did see retail-favorites like XRP kick into gear rising 30% in the first week of 2026 off the back of media companies and market “experts” like CNBC calling it “the hottest crypto trade of the year.” To be honest I’ve never personally been an XRP bull and don’t see that changing any time soon, but its performance is usually a good indicator of retail appetite for the crypto markets and certainly something to keep an eye on.
24 Hour Heatmap, Source: CoinMarketCap
Adding fuel to the ETF fire this week was Morgan Stanley’s ETF filings for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, signaling their intentions to continue expanding into this space. This comes in addition to their October ‘25 announcement clearing advisors to recommend up to 4% allocations to crypto products. Assuming these filings are approved, Morgan Stanley will become the first major bank to operate their own branded crypto ETF products rather than distribute those of other asset managers. As corroborated by Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, we should expect to see other banks follow suit.
It may not always feel like it, but crypto is rapidly maturing as an industry as more and more of our top institutions take the plunge. In Andreessen Horowitz’s raise announcement today in which they detailed their massive $15B raise to deploy across 6 funds, they reiterated its mission of “ensuring that America wins the next 100 years of technology.” This is a lofty goal in need of some more specificity, so Ben Horowitz went on to emphasize they aim to win what they call the “key architectures of the future—AI and crypto.” The proverbial Pandora’s box is open, it’s now time to live up to our potential.
No changes to our holdings this week, but as I mentioned above, seeing the multi-billion dollar XRP pop so hard is an interesting indicator. If retail appetite is really starting to return, we want to be allocated to the right altcoin narratives to capitalize as well as possible. The obvious ones that have emerged recently would be AI and privacy, neither of which we currently have exposure to in the Beluga wallet. Best case scenario for us would be Bitcoin and ETH leading the charge, so we can then use our profits there to rotate into different altcoins before they make their real move. Then again, that’s essentially what we did last year and we can all see how that played out for us…
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