In this photo illustration, the logo for E-Trade, the online trading platform owned by Morgan Stanley, is shown on the company’s website on May 13, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
Morgan Stanley is months away from offering crypto trading to retail customers through its E-Trade division as the Wall Street giant embraces what it called a transformative moment for the wealth management industry.
The firm is working with the startup Zerohash — which Morgan Stanley also took an investment stake in — for liquidity, custody and settlement around crypto trading, according to a memo obtained by CNBC.
“We are well underway in preparing to offer crypto trading through a partner model to E-Trade clients in the first half of 2026,” Jed Finn, head of wealth management at Morgan Stanley, said in the memo.
Morgan Stanley is also working on a “robust wallet infrastructure” that will allow it to be the custodian of digital assets for it clients, a key part of its broader strategy, Finn said.
“Offering clients the ability to trade crypto is the tip of the iceberg,” Finn said. “We see immense power in the crypto currency space, not just with crypto as an investment for our clients, but also around DLT and tokenization more broadly.”
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