Bitcoin and crypto prices have stalled in recent months after rocketing into 2025, with bitcoin price crash fears spooking traders.
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The bitcoin price has traded sideways since May, dropping back from a peak of $124,000 per bitcoin in August as Tesla billionaire Elon Musk issues a stark $37 trillion warning.
Now, as Goldman Sacks warns of U.S. dollar collapse, Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley is gearing up to offer bitcoin and crypto trading in 2026.
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Bitcoin has rocketed higher since the beginning of 2024, with Wall Street adoption helping the bitcoin price to hit multiple all-time highs and top $100,000 per bitcoin.
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“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 a memo seen by CNBC, adding that, “offering clients the ability to trade crypto is the tip of the iceberg.”
At launch, E-Trade clients will be able to trade bitcoin, ethereum and solana, a Morgan Stanley spokesperson told Reuters.
Eventually, Morgan Stanley expects tokenized versions of traditional financial assets on blockchains will “significantly disrupt” the wealth management industry.
“Tokenized substitutes for cash begin paying interest as soon as it hits the wallet. The rest of the asset classes will follow suit in seeking this efficiency,” Finn wrote in the memo, echoing BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink who has said crypto-based tokenization will create a “revolution” on Wall Street.
“We see immense power in the cryptocurrency space, not just with crypto as an investment for our clients, but also around [blockchain’s distributed ledger technology] and tokenization more broadly.”
Morgan Stanley—which is among the most bullish of the Wall Street giants on bitcoin and crypto, making bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) available to its wealth advisors in August last year—will offer crypto trading on E-Trade through a partnership with Zerohash, an infrastructure provider for the digital assets.
This week, Zerohash, which provides crypto trading, tokenization and stablecoin infrastructure for financial institutions, raised $104 million at a $1 billion valuation in a round led by Interactive Brokers, it was reported by Fortune.
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The bitcoin price has dropped back from its August peak but remains well above the levels it traded at through most of 2024.
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Wall Street’s adoption of bitcoin and crypto began in 2023, with a flood of spot bitcoin ETF applications from some of the biggest financial institutions finally succeeding in pushing the bitcoin funds past regulators.
BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF exploded onto Wall Street in early 2024, becoming the fastest growing ETF ever and now holding almost 750,000 bitcoin worth $88 billion on behalf of investors.
BlackRock, which manages around $10 trillion worth of assets for investors, spearheaded Wall Street’s campaign to bring a long-awaited spot bitcoin ETF to market in 2023, with its IBIT bitcoin fund dominating a fleet of funds that launched in January 2024.
