Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade will launch cryptocurrency trading in 2026 through a partnership with digital asset infrastructure provider Zerohash — underscoring Wall Street’s deepening push into digital assets amid a wave of supportive legislation from the Trump administration.
E*Trade clients will be able to buy Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) in the first half of 2026, a Morgan Stanley spokesperson told Reuters.
The announcement confirms a May 1 Bloomberg report that the brokerage planned to add crypto trading next year. At the time, Cointelegraph reported that the initiative was still in early stages as E*Trade sought partnerships with infrastructure providers.
E*Trade was acquired by Morgan Stanley in 2020 for $13 billion. At the time of the deal, the discount brokerage had more than 5.2 million users and offered a retail-focused platform for trading regulated financial securities, focused mainly on US residents.
Zerohash is not a household name in crypto, but Fortune reported Tuesday that it raised $104 million at a $1 billion valuation in a round led by Interactive Brokers. The company provides crypto trading, tokenization and stablecoin infrastructure for financial institutions and other blockchain adopters. Morgan Stanley also participated in the funding round.
As Bloomberg noted, Zerohash will build a full wallet solution for E*Trade clients.
Perhaps E*Trade’s biggest rival in the discount brokerage crypto space is Robinhood, which has rapidly expanded its footprint by offering crypto trading and, more recently, acquiring exchange Bitstamp in a $200 million deal.
Related: Crypto Biz: Wall Street giants bet on stablecoins
Wall Street broadens blockchain push
While E*Trade’s crypto rollout represents one of Morgan Stanley’s first direct retail forays into digital assets, the bank has already been deepening its presence in the space.
Since August 2024, Morgan Stanley has allowed its wealth advisers to actively pitch spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to eligible clients. Earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, CEO Ted Pick said the bank is also exploring the transactional side of crypto.
Interestingly, Morgan Stanley was not among the Wall Street companies reported in May as weighing a joint stablecoin initiative. According to The Wall Street Journal, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo were exploring the idea.
Nevertheless, a 2024 paper by Andrew Peel, Morgan Stanley’s head of digital asset markets, argued that stablecoins could reinforce the US dollar’s global dominance — a view that aligns with recent regulatory efforts to establish clear stablecoin legislation.
That perspective gained traction with the passage of the GENIUS Act, signed into law by US President Donald Trump, which established a comprehensive framework for stablecoin issuers.
Related: Crypto execs center stage as Trump signs stablecoin bill into law
