Overview
- Morgan Stanley, which began a live E*Trade pilot on Wednesday, set a 0.50% transaction fee for Bitcoin, Ether and Solana trades.
- The price undercuts standard retail rates at Coinbase at about 0.60%, Charles Schwab at 0.75%, and Robinhood near 0.95%.
- Access is limited now, with a plan to open the feature to all 8.6 million E*Trade customers later this year.
- Executives call the strategy “disintermediating the disintermediators,” pairing retail trading with a new Bitcoin ETF, planned Ether and Solana ETFs, a February trust bank charter bid, and work on tokenized equity trading.
- E*Trade is using crypto infrastructure firm Zerohash, which lets users trade inside accounts they already use and could spur a fee war that pressures crypto-native platforms on pricing.