Morgan Stanley launches crypto trading on E*Trade at lower fees

At 95 ground points, Robinhood's entry-level complaint is astir treble Morgan Stanley's, portion Coinbase opens astatine 60 ground points and Schwab precocious announced it would acceptable its complaint astatine 75 ground points, per Bloomberg.

Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley's caput of wealthiness management, framed the determination arsenic thing broader than a pricing play. "This is overmuch bigger than trading crypto astatine a cheaper rate," Finn told Bloomberg. "In a way, the strategy is disintermediating the disintermediators."

The crypto trading rollout is 1 portion of a wider propulsion into integer assets astatine Morgan Stanley. The slope debuted a Bitcoin exchange-traded money past period — the archetypal Wall Street slope to bash truthful — and has Ether and Solana ETFs successful development. In February, it applied for a nationalist spot slope charter that would let it to custody integer assets, according to Bloomberg. The slope is besides preparing a work that would fto clients person crypto holdings into exchange-traded products without archetypal selling the assets, and plans to adhd tokenized equity trading connected the organization broadside successful the 2nd fractional of this year.

The E*Trade spot trading work relies connected an statement with Zerohash, a crypto infrastructure provider, and covers Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana astatine launch, according to Bloomberg.

The steadfast is entering a marketplace with established and sizable players. Among the incumbents Morgan Stanley is challenging, Coinbase took successful $3.32 cardinal from user transactions successful 2025, and crypto enactment brought Robinhood $901 cardinal past year, a stock adjacent to one-fifth of its full yearly nett revenue. "It's going to beryllium precise competitory successful the adjacent mates of years, peculiarly fixed the regulatory moats are drying up," Finn told Bloomberg.

The enlargement comes arsenic Morgan Stanley has been posting grounds fiscal results, with full gross rising 16% to $20.58 cardinal successful the archetypal 4th of 2026 and wealthiness absorption gross climbing to a grounds $8.52 billion. When Morgan Stanley paid $13 cardinal for E*Trade successful 2020, the woody thrust it into a retail scenery already shaped by digital-first competitors — Robinhood among them — that had spent years gathering retired crypto features that accepted banks were efficaciously barred from offering.