Morgan Stanley has begun direct cryptocurrency trading on its E*Trade platform. The bank is charging clients 50 basis points per transaction, undercutting Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab.
The pilot is live for a small group of users now. All 8.6 million E*Trade clients are set to gain access later in 2026, according to Bloomberg.
A Direct Shot at Crypto-Native Brokerages
The 0.5% fee places Morgan Stanley below several rivals competing for retail crypto flow. Schwab charges 75 basis points on its newly launched spot Bitcoin and Ether trading. Coinbase retail fees can climb above 0.5% depending on tier and payment method.
Robinhood markets itself as commission-free, but spreads on each trade typically run 35 to 95 basis points. Fidelity’s separate crypto product charges roughly 1% per trade.
The pilot covers Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Solana (SOL). Morgan Stanley has filed exchange-traded fund applications for the same three assets.
Custody, liquidity, and settlement run through Zerohash, the Chicago infrastructure firm in which the bank holds a stake. Mastercard recently moved to acquire the same firm in a deal reported near $2 billion.
E*Trade Fits Into a Wider Crypto Push
The brokerage launch arrives weeks after MSBT, Morgan Stanley’s spot Bitcoin ETF. That fund went live in April with a 0.14% expense ratio, the cheapest in the US market. The bank has also filed for Ether and Solana ETFs.
E*Trade gives Morgan Stanley a distribution channel few crypto-native exchanges can match. Roughly 16,000 in-house advisors oversee about $9.3 trillion in client assets. That base provides multiple paths to push the new trading product.
The aggressive pricing suggests Morgan Stanley is willing to compress margins to capture retail crypto share before peer banks respond.
How quickly Coinbase and Robinhood adjust their effective fees may decide whether this pilot reshapes industry pricing.