Morgan Stanley Adds E-Trade Crypto Trading at 50 bps

Morgan Stanley has begun a pilot offering cryptocurrency spot trading on its E-Trade platform. The pilot charges 50 basis points (0.50%) on the dollar value of each crypto transaction and will be made available to all 8.6 million E-Trade clients later this year. Trading is offered through a partnership with crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash and initially covers bitcoin, ether and solana.

The bank’s 50-basis-point fee compares with roughly 95 basis points at Robinhood, about 60 basis points at Coinbase and a 75-basis-point fee announced by Charles Schwab.

Morgan Stanley has expanded its digital-asset work across several areas. Last month it launched a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund and positioned it as the lowest-cost product in that category. The firm has filed for ether and solana ETFs and in February applied for a national trust bank charter to enable custody of digital assets. People familiar with the plans say the firm is preparing a feature to let clients convert crypto into exchange-traded product shares without first selling the underlying tokens.

On the institutional side, the bank plans to add trading of tokenized equities in the second half of the year, according to people briefed on the plans. Internal discussions about growing crypto services have taken place for years and were at times slowed by market declines and regulatory concerns.

In an interview, Jed Finn, head of wealth management, described the effort as ‘much bigger than trading crypto at a cheaper rate’ and said the strategy aims at ‘disintermediating the disintermediators.’ He added that competition is likely to increase as regulatory barriers to banks’ involvement in crypto change.

Morgan Stanley acquired E-Trade in 2020 for $13 billion and has focused on wealth management in the years since. E-Trade’s retail customer base gives the bank a large audience for cross-selling crypto products that were previously available mainly through independent exchanges and fintech brokers.

Industry figures show the scale of consumer crypto trading: Robinhood reported $901 million in crypto transaction revenue in 2025, about 20% of its net revenue, while Coinbase reported $3.32 billion in consumer transaction revenue that year, with bitcoin and ether making up about 45% of its trading volume.

Executives say discussions about expanding crypto services gathered pace after the 2024 U.S. election as policy and regulatory developments signaled a more permissive environment for banks. The E-Trade pilot is one component of the firm’s plan that includes trading, exchange-traded products, custody capabilities and tokenization for retail and institutional clients.