Trump crypto plans have Wall Street CEOs ready to jump into digital assets
A cartoon image of US President-elect Donald Trump with cryptocurrency tokens, depicted in front of the White House to mark his inauguration, displayed at a Coinhero store in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.
Paul Yeung | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Just days into President Donald Trump’s second administration, Wall Street is singing a different tune on crypto.
“For us, the equation is really around whether we, as a highly regulated financial institution, can act as transactors,” Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick told CNBC on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The newfound optimism among an increasing number of bank execs who were in Davos this week is tied to Trump’s pro-crypto agenda. Trump, a vocal crypto skeptic in his first term, flipped on the issue during his 2024 campaign and came to rely on the crypto industry’s money in his effort to defeat former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president on Thursday issued a sweeping executive order on crypto, with an emphasis on “protecting and promoting” the use and development of digital assets. Banks have been reluctant to support crypto and enable transactions to this point in large part because of the government’s position. The SEC has brought more than 200 cryptocurrency-related enforcement actions since 2013, according to Cornerstone Research.
“We’ll be working with Treasury and the other regulators to figure out how we can offer that in a safe way,” Pick said.
Trump has nominated multiple crypto advocates to critical positions across his administration. They include Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was a commissioner under President George W. Bush. Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is Trump’s pick for secretary of Commerce, and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent was tapped to lead Treasury.
If confirmed, Bessent would oversee the IRS and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which both play key roles in shaping tax and compliance policies for crypto transactions and setting guidelines for crypto adoption in the U.S.
Pick says Morgan Stanley will be working with federal regulators to determine whether it’s possible to deepen the bank’s ties to the cryptocurrency markets. His firm has been more aggressive than its Wall Street peers.
In 2021, Morgan Stanley became the first big U.S. bank to offer its wealthy clients access to bitcoin funds. Last August, it was the first major Wall Street player to let its financial advisors start pitching clients on some of the bitcoin exchange-traded funds that launched early last year. So far, wealth management businesses have only facilitated trades if customers requested exposure to the new spot crypto funds.
Pick suggested that the more bitcoin seeps into the mainstream, the more it’s viewed as a legitimate part of the financial system.
“The longer it trades, perception becomes reality,” he said.
‘Just another form of payment’
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan echoed a willingness to embrace crypto, specifically as a payment option, if the regulatory environment shifts under the new administration. Speaking in Davos, Moynihan emphasized that clear guidelines could unlock broader adoption.
“If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you’ll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it,” Moynihan said in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC.
Moynihan, who runs the second-biggest bank by assets in the U.S., noted that crypto could become “just another form of payment,” like Visa, Mastercard or Apple Pay. However, he steered clear of discussing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as investments or stores of value, calling it “a separate question.”
Another major roadblock to Wall Street’s adoption of cryptocurrencies is an accounting rule, issued by the SEC in 2022, that requires banks to classify cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets. The rule subjects those assets to strict capital requirements, significantly raising the financial and regulatory risks of offering crypto custody services.
Efforts to overturn the rule, known as SAB 121, gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then-President Joe Biden vetoed the proposed legislation, leaving the rule intact and further discouraging banks from adopting digital assets. Banks have been largely forbidden from expanding their crypto offerings beyond derivatives trading and offering ETFs to wealth management clients.
“At the moment, from a regulatory perspective, we can’t own” bitcoin, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in an interview in Davos this week. He said the bank would revisit the issue if the rules changed.
With the pro-crypto Trump administration now in power, there is renewed optimism that SAB 121 could be repealed or revised, allowing banks to custody crypto assets without such burdensome capital requirements.
Bitcoin hit a record of nearly $110,000 on Monday ahead of Trump’s inauguration leading broader gains in the crypto market. As of late Thursday, it was trading at around $104,000.
— CNBC’s Hugh Son contributed to this report.
GE Vernova’s onshore wind business announced that it received orders in 2024 to repower over 1 gigawatt (GW) of wind turbines in the US.
Wind energy repowering is all about breathing new life into older turbines. By swapping out aging parts like turbines, blades, and nacelles for the latest tech, wind farms see significant boosts in efficiency, power capacity, and overall lifespan. Other infrastructure and control systems can also get a second life.
Adding new components to existing infrastructure and grid connections means it’s less expensive to extend the life of the wind farm with fewer resources. New components make the turbines less prone to breakdowns which means less maintenance, so there are fewer operational costs.
The repowering projects for which GE Vernova received orders will use nacelles and drive trains that it manufactures in its Pensacola, Florida, factory.
“As the United States works to meet the doubling of projected demand for more energy, repower projects like these help US workers in US factories take advantage of what we already have, where we already have it,” said Matt Lynch, general manager of Repower at GE Vernova.
The orders were booked between the first and fourth quarters of 2024. GE Vernova’s wind repower projects are expected to come online between 2024 and 2027.
GE Vernova’s onshore wind business has a total installed base of approximately 56,000 turbines and nearly 120 GW of installed capacity worldwide.
Read more: Cleantech investments to top fossil fuels for the first time in 2025
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Kia’s official first-party NACS adapters are now ready to ship out, but owners will have to wait to use them on Tesla Superchargers until later this quarter.
The rollout of Supercharger access to non-Tesla brands is hitting a fever pitch this year, with several brands added to the “coming soon” list, and even beyond that, VW and Honda have both made their own announcements that access is coming soon.
But for most vehicles, charging on Superchargers will require an adapter for the time being, as most brands aren’t adding native NACS ports to their vehicles until a future date (the current exceptions are the 2025 Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 which have native ports).
Each manufacturer is dealing with adapter rollouts separately, and Kia’s ready to announce that their adapters are ready to go.
Kia told us today that shipments of first-party adapters are currently en route to dealerships, and certain owners will be getting a notification soon to claim their adapter.
In Kia’s previous announcement about adapter availability, it said that any 2024 or 2025 EV6 or EV9 owners who took delivery after September 4 would get a free NACS adapter. Those owners should receive a push notification soon in their Kia Connect app through which they can claim their adapter.
For other owners, adapters will be available from Kia dealers for $249, which is roughly in line with the average cost we’ve been seeing for these adapters. Dealers should be getting the adapters any day now.
However, these adapters will be of limited usefulness for the next several weeks. You’ll be able to use them to charge at Tesla destination chargers, or any home charger with a Tesla/NACS plug on it, but Supercharger access still requires a handshake between the car and the charging network, and that handshake is currently disabled.
Originally, Kias were going to gain access on January 15th, but that was pushed back until the “back end of this quarter.” Some owners found out a loophole to allow for charging on the network, but that loophole was closed just yesterday.
As a result, Kia is also including “definitive instructions” on how to use the adapters along with each shipment. It wants to ensure that everyone is using them properly, especially given the recent back-and-forth about, uh, unsanctioned methods to access the network before official availability.
Kia’s EV6 with the native NACS port has also taken longer to arrive than Hyundai’s 2025 Ioniq 5. Ioniq 5s are already shipping (and can even charge faster than Teslas at a Supercharger, a feat the EV6 should also achieve), but EV6s haven’t yet hit dealerships. They should be on around the same timeline as Supercharger access, and ought to be available in the back half of this quarter.
So… Kia fans will still have to wait a little bit, but at least you’ll have the adapters ready to go for when the floodgates open later this quarter.
If you’re looking to buy one of the fastest-charging EVs on the road today, use our link to check local dealers and get in line for when they get the new 2025 Kia EV6s in stock.
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EV charger manufacturer Kempower and Ziegler Energy Solutions have paired up to deliver EV fast charging infrastructure for commercial fleets.
To put it simply, Finland and US-based Kempower brings DC fast chargers to the table, and Ziegler Energy Solutions’ (ZES’s) specialty is infrastructure, energy efficiency, and operational flexibility, along with sales and service.
“As businesses and municipalities increasingly transition to electric fleets, reliable and adaptable EV charging infrastructure with the highest uptime is paramount,” said Troy Monson, general manager of Ziegler Energy Solutions. “Partnering with Kempower enables us to deliver scalable, user-friendly solutions that support our customers’ electrification goals and operational needs.”
ZES, which is now a Kempower Certified Partner, helps fleet operators address challenges like high mileage, uptime demands, and energy cost management using its EV fleet planning tools that simulate real-world scenarios like duty cycles, charging schedules, and energy needs. It also has a leasing program, and integrates solar and battery storage into fast charging infrastructure.
This means Kempower can now offer its DC fast chargers to fleet operators with ZES’s support, ensuring uptime and reliability.
Read more: GM is using AI to find ideal spots for EV charging stations
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