Morgan Stanley to Introduce Crypto Trading for E-Trade Customers by 2026

New York — Morgan Stanley is poised to introduce cryptocurrency trading to retail investors via its E-Trade unit in what the bank said was a revolutionary move for the wealth management space.

As per an internal note that CNBC has accessed, Wall Street bank is teaming up with cryptocurrency infrastructure startup Zerohash, where it also has an investment stake, to offer liquidity, custody, and settlement services. The bank is to roll out the service in the first half of 2026.

We are well advanced in working to provide crypto trading through a partner model to E-Trade customers," said Morgan Stanley's head of wealth management, Jed Finn. He continued that the move is part of the bank's long-term plan of combining digital and traditional assets under a single platform.

Morgan Stanley will first permit clients to trade solana, ether, and bitcoin, Bloomberg said. Unlike previous products that used third-party money to gain exposure to crypto, the new service will permit direct ownership of digital assets, a step that dispenses with some management charges but boosts investors' risks.

Wealth management accounted for almost half of Morgan Stanley's income during the last year, leaving it more reliant on the industry than most of its rivals. The move to extend further into crypto occurs against a wider change of approach by U.S. policy after President Donald Trump was elected, with his administration embracing a more welcoming attitude toward digital assets.

Finn characterized the impending launch as "the tip of the iceberg," adding that Morgan Stanley is working on a digital wallet which would enable the firm to serve as custodian for client assets. Eventually, the long-term vision, he said, is to support tokenized representations of traditional financial assets, such as stocks, bonds, and real estate.

"Tokenized replacements for currency start earning interest the moment it reaches the wallet. The other asset classes will then follow in pursuing this efficiency," Finn stated, forecasting distributed ledger technology to fundamentally transform wealth management.