Key Takeaways:
E*Trade from Morgan Stanley announced Thursday it is rolling out spot crypto trading for bitcoin, ether and solana through digital asset infrastructure firm Zerohash.
Trades price at 50 basis points, crypto displays alongside traditional investments, and transfer functionality is expected later this year.
Morgan Stanley is the first major wirehouse to put spot crypto trading inside a mass retail brokerage platform.
E*Trade from Morgan Stanley announced Thursday it is rolling out spot crypto trading, giving eligible clients the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin, ether and solana directly on the platform through a partnership with digital asset infrastructure firm Zerohash. Trades price at 50 basis points, clients see their crypto alongside their traditional investments, and transfer functionality is expected later this year.
The rollout puts spot crypto in front of one of the largest retail brokerage bases in the country. E*Trade serves roughly 8.6 million customers, per CoinDesk, and Morgan Stanley first said in September 2025 that it would bring crypto trading to the platform in the first half of 2026. The launch arrived a couple of weeks behind that window, wrapped inside a broader platform refresh that includes fractional share trading, a new retirement planning experience and an updated IPO center.
Chad Turner, head of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Platforms, said in the announcement that the firm is "advancing our digital assets strategy" by bringing the capability to clients in an integrated way.
The pattern here is hard to ignore. Crypto access is moving inside the accounts Americans already have, not the other way around. Morgan Stanley is the first of the big wirehouses to put spot trading in a mass retail brokerage, and it lands the same month Circle opened a federally chartered trust bank for USDC and Visa, Mastercard and Ripple stood up a stablecoin payments standard for AI agents. When a brokerage brand that predates the web sells solana next to index funds, the debate about whether this infrastructure arrives is settled. What remains is execution, and the transfer feature later this year will show how far Morgan Stanley intends to take it.
People Also Ask
Which cryptocurrencies can E*Trade clients trade?
Bitcoin, ether and solana, held in a linked Zerohash account that displays alongside traditional investments on the E*Trade platform.
How much does crypto trading cost on E*Trade?
50 basis points per transaction, or 0.5 percent of the trade value.
Can E*Trade clients transfer crypto to external wallets?
Not yet. E*Trade says transfer functionality is expected to launch later this year.
Why are brokerages adding spot crypto now?
Federal rules like the GENIUS Act and OCC charters have clarified the regulatory ground, and firms including Morgan Stanley are moving crypto inside existing brokerage accounts rather than leaving it to standalone exchanges.
Sources: FX News Group, CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance