Morgan Stanley to let E-trade clients trade crypto as firm backs Zerohash's $104 million round

Morgan Stanley may be taking its biggest leap yet into crypto.

The Wall Street giant has not only invested in Zerohash's $104 million Series D-2 raise, but it also plans to tap the crypto infrastructure firm to help it offer E-trade clients access to trading Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

Interactive Brokers led the new funding round for Zerohash, which also included participation from SoFi, Apollo-managed funds, and Jump Crypto, among others, according to a statement. Thanks to the new raise, the startup has reached unicorn status with a valuation of $1 billion, the statement said.

Zerohash is a blockchain startup that provides infrastructure for fiat, stablecoins, and digital assets via APIs.

Simultaneously, Zerohash will aid Morgan Stanley with its plan to allow E-trade clients to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, according to reports from Bloomberg and CNBC. The rollout should occur in the coming months. Rival trading platform Robinhood already offers crypto trading.

Letting E-trade clients trade the popular tokens is "phase one," according to Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley’s head of wealth management, Bloomberg reported.

"The underlying technology has been proven and blockchain-based infrastructure is obviously here to stay,” Finn told Bloomberg. "Clients should have access to digitized assets, traditional assets and cryptocurrencies, all in the same ecosystem that they’re used to."

So far, Morgan Stanley's involvement in digital assets has primarily been restricted to investing in Bitcoin or spot Bitcoin ETFs. Back in 2021, the firm co-led a $48 million Series B funding round in Securitize, which provides asset tokenization services.

Since the Trump administration took power earlier this year, innovation and investment in the digital assets industry have been gathering momentum as regulatory hurdles have been removed. In parallel, traditional financial institutions have increased their exposure.

"Every financial institution is looking to provide access to the crypto asset class and innovate with this technology at scale," Zerohash CFO Adam Berg said in Tuesday's funding announcement. "I've recently met with multiple large bank CEOs and financial services executives, many of whom said that they are spending more than 50% of their time driving on-chain innovation at their firms."