Morgan Stanley is introducing cryptocurrency trading through its E*Trade platform, starting with a pilot program and planning a broader rollout later this year. Bloomberg and other outlets report that the bank is offering a 50-basis-point fee per crypto trade in the pilot, positioning it as cheaper than pricing available through several major retail and brokerage platforms. Reported comparisons include Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab, which various sources describe as charging higher starting rates for similar crypto transactions.
The American Banker and other coverage state that the expanded service is expected to reach Morgan Stanley’s roughly 8.6 million E*Trade users later this year after the pilot. CoinDesk and CoinTelegraph both link the initiative to Morgan Stanley’s broader push into digital assets, noting that it comes weeks after the firm launched a bitcoin ETF.
Across the sources, the central points are the start of crypto trading on E*Trade, the specific pilot fee rate, and the timeline for scaling the offering to the wider customer base, alongside the bank’s positioning relative to competitors’ fee schedules.
