Source: E*Trade is preparing to let customers trade cryptocurrencies on its platform starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum, will consider adding other currencies
- The brokerage giant will offer Bitcoin and Ethereum trades — Service will compete with startups like Coinbase and Robinhood
Context & Ripple Effects
E*Trade's reported plan lands in a market startups have already staked out: Coinbase added ether to its exchange back in May 2016, and weeks before this report Robinhood won its New York BitLicense and launched seven coins there in its first regulated state expansion. What's new is that a full-service brokerage with an established customer base would offer crypto alongside stocks and funds rather than as a standalone app.
The arc didn't close quickly: the plan sat dormant for years until Morgan Stanley's E-Trade revived it in early 2025, explicitly conditioning a launch on Federal Reserve approval amid an expected friendlier regulatory climate, before rolling out a priced-to-undercut pilot in 2026.
First-order effects
- Coinbase and Robinhood, named in the report as the service's competitors, immediately gain their first big-brokerage rival for retail Bitcoin and Ethereum trades — competing against an incumbent that already holds customers' taxable accounts.
Second-order effects
- A brokerage-scale entrant pressures the startups on cost and convenience rather than coin selection, forcing both to defend the low-fee, in-app experience that has been their core pitch to retail traders.
Third-order effects
- If incumbent brokers keep moving — as Morgan Stanley's eventual Fed-gated exploration and 2026 underpricing pilot suggest — crypto trading shifts from a specialist-startup product to a standard line item on mainstream brokerage platforms, with regulator sign-off becoming the gating factor for how fast that migration happens.
The trend: Retail cryptocurrency distribution is migrating from specialist apps like Coinbase and Robinhood toward incumbent brokerage platforms, paced by regulators rather than by the brokers themselves.