Morgan Stanley launches ETrade crypto at 0.5% fee

Morgan Stanley has launched E*Trade crypto trading at 0.5%, undercutting Coinbase, Schwab, and Robinhood in a pilot set to reach 8.6 million users.

Summary

• Morgan Stanley launched an E*Trade crypto pilot on May 6, charging 50 basis points per trade for Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana via infrastructure partner Zerohash.
• The 0.5% fee undercuts Charles Schwab at 75bps, Fidelity at 1%, and Coinbase retail fees that can exceed 0.5% depending on tier and payment method.
• All 8.6 million E*Trade clients are set to gain access later in 2026, alongside a proprietary digital wallet expected in the second half of the year.

Morgan Stanley has launched ETrade crypto trading at a flat 0.5% fee, below Coinbase and Schwab. The pilot went live on May 6 with Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana available directly inside ETrade brokerage accounts via Zerohash, which handles liquidity, custody, and settlement. Bloomberg reported the pricing, which places Morgan Stanley below every major retail competitor.

Schwab launched its own spot Bitcoin and Ether trading in April at 75 basis points. Fidelity charges roughly 1% per trade. Robinhood is commission-free but carries spreads of 35 to 95 basis points per transaction.

ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said rivals “likely won’t let this stand” and predicted fees across the industry will compress sharply, drawing a parallel to the race to zero expense ratios among Bitcoin ETFs.

What the service includes

Clients receive direct ownership of digital assets rather than fund exposure, which eliminates third-party management fees but carries greater price risk. The pilot does not yet support staking. Zerohash manages all back-end operations, keeping private keys away from users.

As crypto.news tracked, the ETrade crypto rollout is one piece of a broader digital asset push that includes Morgan Stanley’s MSBT Bitcoin ETF, which launched April 8 at a 0.14% expense ratio and hit $103m in inflows within days.

The bank is also building a proprietary digital wallet expected in the second half of 2026, designed to hold crypto alongside tokenized stocks, bonds, and real estate. Morgan Stanley head of wealth management Jed Finn previously described the crypto trading launch as “only the beginning.”

Competitive and market implications

The ETrade launch arrives as crypto.news reported that Morgan Stanley is also pursuing an OCC national trust bank charter for direct crypto custody and staking.

Coinbase generated $3.32bn in consumer transaction revenue in 2025 and launched its own commission-free stock and ETF trading in February to compete with traditional brokerages.

Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 financial advisors oversee $9.3 trillion in client assets, giving ETrade a distribution channel crypto-native platforms cannot match. If the 8.6 million user rollout reaches full scale, it would represent one of the largest retail crypto on-ramps in the US brokerage market.