Banking giant Morgan Stanley wants to double down on Crypto
Morgan Stanley has applied for a National Trust Bank charter to provide direct custody services to its institutional clients. This represents a major push by Wall Street into the digital asset sector.
The $9 trillion banking giant filed a de novo application with the Financial Conduct Authority on February 18.
Morgan Stanley's new OCC bid to rival Bitgo and Anchorage
If approved, the charter would challenge the boundaries of traditional banking regulations and make Morgan Stanley a direct competitor to crypto-native custodians like BitGo and Anchorage Digital.
The filing marks a significant change in the competitive landscape. While the OCC has previously granted conditional trust charters to crypto-focused companies, the old wirehouse will show greater flexibility in regulatory oversight to ensure full approval.
Industry analysts attribute this renewed push to the Trump administration's efforts to provide clearer federal guidelines for traditional financial institutions entering the digital asset space.
“This year, people will be surprised – the world's largest institutions and corporations are fully coming to crypto,” Hunter Horsley, Bitwise CEO, said.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley's filing outlines ambitious plans to offer custodial, trading and equity services under one roof.
Thus, the OCC filing is part of a bifurcated digital asset strategy that separates institutional wealth management from retail operations.
Institutionally, the bank is actively investing in blockchain infrastructure. A recent job posting for a Lead Engineer at Morgan Stanley is building a decentralized finance and real-world asset tokenization platform.
The role requires expertise in both public blockchains such as Ethereum and Polygon and private permissioned networks such as Hyperledger and Canton.
This highlights the bank's objective of linking institutional assets in the garden with the liquidity of the public network.
At the same time, Morgan Stanley is planning a major retail expansion.
The firm plans to launch live cryptocurrency trading on its ETrade platform in the first half of 2026, offering Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana to everyday investors.
The ETrade integration represents a direct challenge to retail-focused exchanges like Coinbase and Robinhood.
Indeed, this dual approach highlights a broader trend among traditional financial titans.
Buoyed by a more favorable regulatory environment in Washington, legacy banks are rapidly accelerating their crypto roadmaps. Now they're transitioning from facilitating an exchange-traded fund to building core infrastructure while hiring specialized Web3 talent.
