Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade to Open Crypto Trading by 2026

Morgan Stanley is preparing to bring cryptocurrency trading to E-Trade, its online brokerage platform, marking one of the most significant steps yet by a major U.S. bank into the retail crypto market. According to reports from Reuters and CNBC, the new service will launch in the first half of 2026 and initially allow trading of Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana.

The bank will partner with digital asset infrastructure provider zerohash to roll out the service, offering clients direct access to cryptocurrencies rather than exposure through third-party funds. By integrating crypto directly into E-Trade’s platform, Morgan Stanley intends to cut management fees, simplify access, and provide clients with full ownership of their digital assets.

This is not Morgan Stanley’s first foray into the sector. The bank began offering Bitcoin funds to wealth management clients in 2021, amid shifting regulatory conditions following Donald Trump’s election. Its latest move goes further, extending access to millions of E-Trade users and positioning the platform among the largest mainstream financial firms to directly integrate crypto trading.

Zerohash, which provides compliant infrastructure for trading cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenized assets, also announced this week that it had raised $104 million in a Series D-2 funding round. Morgan Stanley participated in the investment, signaling the depth of the bank’s commitment to the partnership. Zerohash said the new funding would accelerate product expansion, talent acquisition, and the development of on-chain solutions tailored to financial institutions.

“Every financial institution is looking to provide access to the crypto asset class and innovate with this technology at scale,” Adam Berg, chief financial officer and chief administrative officer of zerohash, noted in a press release. The company’s technology is designed to embed seamlessly into apps, platforms, and wallets, making it an appealing partner for banks seeking to enter the digital asset space without building infrastructure from scratch.

The regulatory landscape is also shaping the timing of the rollout. Reports earlier this year suggested E-Trade was considering crypto integration with the expectation that the U.S. policy environment would become friendlier to digital assets under the Trump administration’s second term. That bet appears to be paying off, as more institutions—including PNC Bank, which partnered with Coinbase in July—take steps to integrate crypto services into their offerings.

For Morgan Stanley, the move represents both an expansion of its digital strategy and a competitive response to rival institutions experimenting with blockchain and tokenized assets. By bringing crypto into the same app where millions of clients already trade stocks and ETFs, the bank hopes to make digital assets feel less like an exotic side market and more like a standard investment option.

If successful, E-Trade’s integration of crypto trading could mark a turning point, signaling that digital assets are no longer confined to niche exchanges but are becoming an integral part of mainstream finance.