Morgan Stanley is moving deeper into Bitcoin and crypto trading through E*Trade, bringing digital-asset access to one of the largest retail brokerage platforms in the United States and competing directly on price with crypto-native and brokerage rivals.
The Wall Street bank is rolling out cryptocurrency trading on ETrade with a 50-basis-point fee on the dollar value of each transaction, according to a Bloomberg report. The service is currently in pilot mode, with all of ETrade’s 8.6 million clients expected to gain access later this year, Bloomberg reported. The offering undercuts Coinbase, Robinhood and Charles Schwab on disclosed transaction pricing.
The launch gives Morgan Stanley a direct retail channel for spot crypto trading through ETrade, the brokerage it acquired in a roughly $13 billion transaction. When Morgan Stanley announced the deal in 2020, it described ETrade’s consumer-facing technology platforms as a complement to its advisor-facing wealth management franchise, while also highlighting the acquisition’s role in expanding more durable, balance-sheet-light revenue streams.
At launch, the ETrade crypto offering is expected to begin with bitcoin, ether and solana. Morgan Stanley previously said the service would be delivered through a partnership with Zerohash, a digital asset infrastructure provider responsible for enabling crypto trading rails. Reuters reported last year that the bank planned to bring crypto trading to ETrade in the first half of 2026 through that tie-up.
The pricing is the clearest competitive signal. E*Trade’s 50-basis-point charge compares with Coinbase at 60 basis points, Robinhood at 95 basis points and Charles Schwab at 75 basis points, based on figures cited in reporting on the rollout. For retail clients who trade frequently or allocate larger sums, even modest differences in transaction fees can compound into a meaningful cost gap over time.
Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley’s head of wealth management, framed the move as broader than a low-cost trading launch. “This is much bigger than trading crypto at a cheaper rate,” Finn said. “In a way, the strategy is disintermediating the disintermediators.”
That framing matters because Morgan Stanley is not simply adding another tradable asset to a brokerage menu. It is placing crypto inside an existing wealth and trading ecosystem used by millions of clients, reducing the need for customers to move assets to a dedicated crypto exchange if they want spot exposure. For Coinbase and other crypto-native venues, the pressure is not only fee compression; it is the possibility that large banks can bundle crypto access with brokerage, cash management, portfolio tools and advisory relationships.
Finn had previously outlined a similar strategic logic when Morgan Stanley’s partnership with Zerohash was first reported. “The underlying technology has been proven and blockchain-based infrastructure is obviously here to stay,” he said. “Clients should have access to digitized assets, traditional assets and cryptocurrencies, all in the same ecosystem that they’re used to.”
The bank’s crypto push also reflects a wider shift among U.S. financial institutions. Reuters reported in September that crypto markets had grown into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class, while noting that Wall Street brokerages were expanding digital-asset offerings amid a more supportive U.S. regulatory posture under the Trump administration. E*Trade competitors have taken different approaches: Robinhood offers trading in a broad set of tokens, while Schwab has provided investor access to exchange-traded funds tied to bitcoin and ether.
For Morgan Stanley, the E*Trade launch appears to be only one layer of a broader digital-asset strategy. Earlier reporting said the firm was also exploring a full wallet solution for clients, crypto asset-allocation strategies and broader tokenization use cases, including possible applications in settlement and clearing. Finn described the opportunity in wealth management as sitting between traditional finance and decentralized finance while simplifying the client experience.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.
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