Morgan Stanley to Start Trading Bitcoin and Ethereum on E-Trade

Morgan Stanley is preparing to take an important step in the cryptocurrency industry, offering E-Trade users the ability to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. Morgan Stanley, one of Wall Street's giants, participated in the $104 million investment round of crypto infrastructure company Zerohash. This initiative will be used to provide crypto trading to E-Trade customers. According to Bloomberg and CNBC, the new service will be launched in the coming months.

Morgan Stanley's move is notable in that it will compete with the crypto trading already offered by rival platform Robinhood. Zerohash is a blockchain startup that develops API-based infrastructure solutions for fiat, stablecoins and digital assets. In addition to Interactive Brokers, key players such as SoFi, Apollo-managed funds and Jump Crypto participated in this investment round. With this financing, Zerohash has achieved unicorn status, reaching a valuation of $1 billion.

Jed Finn, head of Morgan Stanley's asset management unit, described this development as "phase one" and said, "Blockchain infrastructure has now proven itself. Clients should be able to access both digital assets and traditional products within the ecosystem they are accustomed to." Until now, Morgan Stanley's interest in crypto has been limited to Bitcoin investments and spot Bitcoin ETFs. Previously, the firm led a $48 million investment round in Securitize, a startup focused on asset tokenization.

With the Trump administration in office, reduced regulatory hurdles in the US have accelerated investment in the crypto sector. "Every financial institution today is looking to offer access to crypto assets and innovate at scale with blockchain technology," said Adam Berg, CFO at Zerohash. Many bank CEOs I've spoken to say they spend more than half of their time on on-chain innovation."