Morgan Stanley has launched direct cryptocurrency trading on its E*Trade platform, charging clients 50 basis points per transaction — a rate that undercuts Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab.
The pilot is currently live for a small group of users, with all 8.6 million E*Trade clients set to gain access later in 2026, according to Bloomberg.
Cheaper than the competition
The 0.5% fee puts 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, while 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, ether, and solana. Custody, liquidity, and settlement run through Zerohash, the Chicago infrastructure firm in which Morgan Stanley holds a stake — the same firm Mastercard recently moved to acquire in a deal reported near $2 billion.
Part of a broader crypto push
Morgan Stanley’s Head of Wealth Management, Jed Finn, framed the initiative as more than a fee play, saying it is aimed at “disintermediating the disintermediators” — a broader structural shift in how clients access digital assets.
The E*Trade launch comes weeks after the bank debuted MSBT, its spot bitcoin ETF, which launched in April with a 0.14% expense ratio, the cheapest in the US market.
Morgan Stanley has also filed for ether and solana ETFs and applied for a national trust bank charter that would allow it to directly custody digital assets.
Sources told Bloomberg the bank is also exploring services that would let clients convert crypto holdings into exchange-traded products without selling, and is preparing for potential tokenized equity trading later this year.
Scale that rivals can’t match
Roughly 16,000 in-house advisors oversee about $9.3 trillion in client assets, giving Morgan Stanley a distribution channel few crypto-native exchanges can match.
The competitive pressure is real: Coinbase generated $3.32 billion in consumer transaction revenue in 2025, while Robinhood reported nearly $1 billion in crypto-related revenue.
