Morgan Stanley launches BTC, ETH, SOL on E*TRADE
What E*TRADE actually launched
ETRADE, the retail brokerage owned by Morgan Stanley, has added crypto trading to its platform. The brokerage’s announcement reads: “You can now trade crypto on ETRADE’s award-winning platform, with insights from Morgan Stanley’s team of experts,” and specifies that the service is “Powered by zerohash.”
On pricing, E*TRADE lists 0.50% crypto commissions “on the dollar value of each trade,” alongside its existing $0 commissions on stocks, ETFs, options and mutual funds. The brokerage also points clients to a “Crypto Essentials” learning hub with Morgan Stanley education, insights and market commentary.
The move extends spot access to three assets that all sit in our covered layer-1 set: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. Previously, E*TRADE framed crypto exposure as indirect — its investment-choices page still references “gaining indirect exposure to cryptocurrencies via securities and futures” — so direct spot trading is a distinct step for the platform.
How the three coins traded on the day
Using our CoinMarketCap data as of the snapshot, none of the three assets showed an outsized single-day move tied to the listing. Each was modestly lower over 24 hours, in a tight band between roughly -1% and -2%.
Bitcoin traded at $64,643.99, down 0.95% over 24 hours, according to our CoinMarketCap data. It was the strongest performer of the trio on the day and up 2.87% over seven days, though still down 2.05% over 30 days.
Ethereum traded at $1,891.09, down 2.03% over 24 hours per our CoinMarketCap data. It carried the best medium-term reading of the three: up 8.66% over seven days and up 5.36% over 30 days.
Solana traded at $76.62, down 2.06% over 24 hours according to our CoinMarketCap data. Over longer windows it was mixed — down 1.74% over seven days but up 3.73% over 30 days.
The clustering of the 24-hour figures (all within about one percentage point of each other) suggests the day’s action reflected broad market direction rather than an asset-specific reaction to the E*TRADE news.
Liquidity: what the listing plugs into
The three assets differ sharply in the depth of the market E*TRADE clients are now able to access. On our CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin recorded $29.43 billion in 24-hour trading volume, Ethereum $11.71 billion and Solana $1.93 billion.
Market capitalization tells the same story of scale. Bitcoin’s market cap stood at $1.297 trillion, Ethereum’s at $228.22 billion and Solana’s at $44.62 billion, per our CoinMarketCap data. Bitcoin alone is worth more than five times the combined market cap of the other two coins on the list.
That gap matters for a brokerage rollout. Because E*TRADE routes orders through Zerohash, retail flow feeds into venues where Bitcoin and Ethereum already have the deepest order books among the three, while Solana is an order of magnitude smaller on both volume and capitalization.
Why brokerage access matters across the covered set
E*TRADE describes itself as an award-winning platform, citing recognition as the #1 Web Trading Platform for the 14th year in a row from Stockbrokers.com and the #1 for Research in Kiplinger’s 2025 review. Adding spot crypto to that distribution channel places BTC, ETH and SOL alongside stocks, options, futures, ETFs and bonds in a single brokerage account.
For the covered set, the significance is structural rather than price-driven. All three assets share the layer-1 category, and their inclusion means a mainstream US brokerage is treating them as tradable spot instruments rather than only as indirect exposure through securities and futures — the framing E*TRADE’s investment-choices page previously used.
E*TRADE is careful to caveat the product. Its disclosures note that investment products are “Not FDIC Insured,” carry “No Bank Guarantee” and “May Lose Value,” and that nothing on the site constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell. Those standard warnings apply to the crypto offering as they do to the rest of the platform.
The bottom line
The headline is access, not a price catalyst. E*TRADE’s launch broadens the distribution of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana to a large retail brokerage audience at a 0.50% trade commission, but on the day of the snapshot the three coins moved together and modestly lower, consistent with market-wide conditions rather than a listing-specific bump.
Coins in this story
Sources
Reporting is drawn from the primary sources listed above and CryptoNewsAlert's own licensed CoinMarketCap price data. See our editorial & data policy for how articles are produced and reviewed.
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