Cryptocurrencies,  Technology

Morgan Stanley Jumps Into Low-Fee Crypto Trading

50 basis point fees would undercut competitors

By  / May 6, 2026 /

Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade discount brokerage division is jumping into the digital asset arena with a pilot program allowing low-fee cryptocurrency trading.

The Wall Street bank’s emphasis is on the “discount” part of discount brokerage, offering trades for just 50 basis points on the dollar, or 0.5%.

The launch is Morgan Stanley’s attempt to gain a share of an asset class that was until recently untouchable by banks, according to Bloomberg. The firm is anticipating that decentralized finance, or DeFi, will merge with traditional finance, underpinning a strategy of creating crypto-related offerings on many of its business lines to attract customers.

The plan is to roll crypto trading out to all 8.6 million E*Trade customers by the end of the year. This will begin with bitcoin, ether, and solana.

With its 50-basis-point fee, Morgan Stanley is seeking to undercut competitors like Coinbase, Robinhood Markets, and Charles Schwab, which has announced Schwab Crypto, allowing the trading of ether and bitcoin for 75 basis points. It will roll out this year.

In May, Morgan Stanley launched Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, an ETF holding the largest cryptocurrency. Plans are in the works for Ethereum and Solana ETFs as well. In February, it applied to the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank trust charter to establish Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, National Association, which will allow it to directly custody digital assets, as well as offer trading and staking services for its wealth management clients.

And Morgan Stanley is expected to roll out tokenized stock trading in the second half of 2026. As part of that effort, it will launch a digital wallet capable of holding tokenized stocks and cryptocurrencies.

The bank’s overall crypto strategy is to disintermediate the disintermediators, Morgan Stanley head of wealth management Jed Finn told Bloomberg.

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Leo Jakobson, Modern Consensus editor-in-chief, is a New York-based journalist who has traveled the world writing about incentive travel. He has also covered consumer and employee engagement, small business, the East Coast side of the Internet boom and bust, and New York City crime, nightlife, and politics.