Morgan Stanley Debuts Crypto Trading On E*Trade With Lower Fees Than Rivals
Wall Street behemoth Morgan Stanley has launched its long-awaited crypto buying and selling pilot on its E*Trade platform, aiming to problem main established gamers with aggressive pricing.
Morgan Stanley Debuts Crypto Trading Pilot
Baking big Morgan Stanley has rolled out a pilot to supply direct crypto buying and selling on its E*Trade platform, with cheaper pricing than its competitors, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, the financial institution is charging E*Trade customers a 50-basis-point charge on the transaction worth, putting its costs beneath these of different main gamers. For occasion, Robinhood’s charges begin at 95 foundation factors, whereas Coinbase and Charles Schwab’s charges begin at 60 and 75 foundation factors, respectively.
Morgan Stanley is at present providing its crypto buying and selling pilot to a restricted variety of customers, however expects to provide entry to all of E*Trade’s 8.6 million shoppers later this yr. Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley’s head of wealth administration, mentioned in an interview that the launch is “a lot greater than buying and selling crypto at a less expensive fee,” including that “the technique is disintermediating the disintermediators.”
The banking big purchased E*Trade in 2020 for $13 billion. In May 2025, it introduced plans to permit crypto buying and selling on the platform, following the Trump administration’s efforts to make the US “the crypto capital of the world.”
People aware of the matter instructed Bloomberg that executives are making ready an providing to immediately convert cryptocurrencies into shares of exchange-traded merchandise (ETPs) with out promoting the belongings. In addition, the financial institution reportedly plans so as to add the power to commerce tokenized equities within the second half of 2026.
Morgan Stanley’s Strategic Digital Assets Push
The launch is a part of Morgan Stanley’s broader push to increase within the digital belongings area, an business that till not too long ago was off-limits to banks. Over the previous few years, the Wall Street big has been betting on the convergence of conventional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi).
In 2024, Morgan Stanley, which has constructed some of the important Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) holdings within the US, allowed its managers to supply the funds as an funding possibility for its rich prospects.
Last yr, it expanded entry to crypto fund investments for all shoppers, shifting away from the earlier restrictions that restricted entry to people with not less than $1.5 million in belongings and an aggressive danger tolerance. The shift allowed its monetary advisors to current the funds to any consumer, together with these with retirement accounts.
Notably, Morgan Stanley turned the primary Wall Street financial institution to debut a spot Bitcoin ETF in April, and made it the most cost effective fund within the class. The financial institution additionally filed for spot Ethereum and Solana ETFs earlier this yr, that are anticipated to debut this yr.
In February, it joined the listing of firms applying for a nationwide belief financial institution constitution with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). In its utility, the financial institution mentioned that the constitution can be used to conduct crypto buying and selling and staking for its funding shoppers, reinforcing its strategic push for the broader digital asset business.