Morgan Stanley has quietly kicked off a long-anticipated crypto trading pilot on its E*Trade platform — and it’s doing so with a price point designed to turn heads.
What’s new
- The Wall Street bank is charging E*Trade users a 50-basis-point fee on transaction value during the pilot, undercutting several major rivals. For comparison: Robinhood’s crypto fees start at 95 bps, Coinbase at 60 bps, and Charles Schwab at 75 bps, according to Bloomberg.
- The pilot is live for a limited group of customers now, with Morgan Stanley planning to roll access out to all of E*Trade’s roughly 8.6 million clients later this year.
Why it matters
Jed Finn, head of wealth management at Morgan Stanley, framed the launch as more than a pricing play: “much bigger than trading crypto at a cheaper rate,” he said, adding that the strategy aims at “disintermediating the disintermediators.” That signals a push to capture more of the crypto value chain within Morgan Stanley’s wealth-management ecosystem — rather than simply routing clients to third-party exchanges.
Product roadmap and strategic moves
- People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg the bank is preparing technology to convert cryptocurrencies directly into shares of exchange-traded products (ETPs) without first selling the crypto — a capability that would streamline client flows and potentially reduce tax or market-impact frictions.
- Morgan Stanley also plans to add tokenized-equities trading in the second half of 2026.
- Earlier moves show the bank’s steady pivot into digital assets: it allowed managers to offer Bitcoin ETFs to wealthy customers in 2024, broadened access to crypto fund investments in 2025 (removing prior minimum-asset and risk-tolerance gates), and was the first Wall Street bank to debut a spot Bitcoin ETF in April — which it priced as the cheapest fund in that category.
- The firm has also filed for spot Ethereum and Solana ETFs this year and applied for a national trust bank charter with the OCC in February, saying the charter would support crypto trading and staking for investment clients.
Context
Morgan Stanley bought E*Trade in 2020 for $13 billion and formally announced plans to add crypto trading in May 2025 amid broader regulatory and political momentum to position the U.S. as a leading hub for crypto activity. The pilot — low-cost trading plus upcoming ETP-conversion and tokenized equities — signals the bank’s attempt to bridge TradFi and DeFi capabilities and challenge incumbent exchanges and retail platforms.
Bottom line
With a sub-market fee and a roadmap for deeper, custody-integrated crypto services, Morgan Stanley is positioning itself to be a major institutional gateway for retail and wealth clients into digital assets. If the pilot expands as planned, it could force competitors to rethink pricing and product strategy — and accelerate the push by banks into services that were until recently off-limits.
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