The recent period of sideways trading may make traders impatient or even discouraged altogether. At any rate, those who crave more action in Bitcoin could be driven out of the market. But this is no time to bet on Bitcoin staying docile.

If the recent months haven’t exactly been rosy for Bitcoin traders, there are avenues which might offer more optimistic news. Unlikely avenues, perhaps. A report by Morgan Stanley suggests that Bitcoin might have become an asset class for institutional investors. In an article on CoinDesk, we read:

Institutional investors are increasingly getting involved in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies – while the number of retail investors in the space is staying stagnant – according to a new report by Morgan Stanley.

In an update to “Bitcoin Decrypted: A Brief Teach-In and Implications,” the global banking giant’s research division delved into the last six months of bitcoin and highlighted certain trends it noticed. The report is dated October 31.

Perhaps most notably, the report emphasized its writers’ view of the market’s “rapidly morphing thesis,” which began by defining bitcoin as “digital cash” and noting that investors had full confidence in it, to a solution for issues in the financial system, to a new payment system to ultimately a new institutional investment class.

Various issues and discoveries around the bitcoin ecosystem have caused the thesis to evolve, including the permanent ledger recording all transactions, a number of hacks, hard forks, new technologies which are cheaper than bitcoin, market volatility and other concerns, the report explains.

As such, the market’s current thesis appears to be that bitcoin is a “new institutional investment class,” and has been for almost a year, the authors wrote. The amount of crypto assets under management has been increasing since January 2016, with $7.11 billion currently being stored by hedge funds, venture capital firms and private equity firms.