Source: E*Trade is preparing to let customers trade cryptocurrencies on its platform starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum, will consider adding other currencies
Julie Verhage / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
This Bloomberg report is the opening move in a long arc: E*Trade's plan to offer Bitcoin and Ethereum sits alongside Robinhood's New York crypto launch weeks later, which followed its January BitLicense approval — evidence that consumer brokers were racing each other into crypto in 2019.
The idea stalled for years but never died: Morgan Stanley's E-Trade revisited crypto trading in 2025, conditioned on Federal Reserve approval, before finally rolling out a pilot in 2026 priced below Coinbase, Robinhood, and Schwab. Today's report matters because it shows how early the brokerage-crypto convergence began.
First-order effects
- E*Trade's customer base gains direct access to Bitcoin and Ethereum inside an existing brokerage account, removing the need to onboard with Coinbase or another dedicated exchange.
Second-order effects
- Rival consumer brokers — Robinhood most directly, given its simultaneous crypto push — face pressure to match a full-service brokerage's crypto offering, while Coinbase sees a new class of incumbent competitors bundling crypto with retirement and taxable accounts.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across seven years of coverage — from this 2019 plan through the Fed-gated exploration to Morgan Stanley's 2026 undercutting pilot — crypto trading ends up a table-stakes feature of mainstream brokerage platforms, with pricing set by diversified financial firms rather than crypto-native exchanges.
The trend: Cryptocurrency trading is being absorbed from crypto-native exchanges into mainstream consumer brokerage platforms, a shift that took the better part of a decade and regulatory clearance to complete.