Morgan Stanley has set off a pricing battle in the cryptocurrency exchange space by introducing ultraslow trading fees on its E*Trade platform. The financial powerhouse now allows users to trade Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana at just 50 basis points per transaction, a rate that decisively beats competitors like Schwab at 75 basis points, Fidelity at 1%, and Coinbase’s often higher retail charges. This aggressive move leverages Zerohash for liquidity, custody, and settlement, directly embedding crypto trading into standard brokerage accounts.
The initiative is more than a fee reduction, according to Morgan Stanley’s wealth management head Jed Finn, who frames it as a strategy to retain clients within the firm’s ecosystem. With a pilot launched on May 6, the bank aims to eventually extend this service to all 8.6 million E*Trade customers later in 2026, alongside plans for a proprietary digital wallet that would hold crypto alongside tokenized stocks, bonds, and real estate.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas warned that crypto exchanges should be concerned, drawing parallels to the fee wars sparked by spot Bitcoin ETFs. He predicted that trading costs across the industry will plummet as a result. Coinbase, which reported a Q1 2026 loss of $1.49 per share on $1.41 billion revenue, has already responded by launching commission-free stock trading in February to diversify beyond crypto fees. Morgan Stanley’s distribution network, encompassing 16,000 financial advisors managing $9.3 trillion in assets, gives it a scale that pure crypto platforms cannot easily counter. The firm also recently launched its own spot Bitcoin ETF, MSBT, with a mere 14 basis point fee, which avoided outflows in its first month, setting a new standard.