Asset management scale of $1.7 trillion, Wall Street giant embraces encryption: Morgan Stanley's E-Trade will soon launch digital asset trading

Wall Street financial giant Morgan Stanley recently announced plans to offer cryptocurrency trading services to retail clients through its E-Trade division in the first half of next year. This move signifies further penetration of traditional finance institutions into the digital asset field. The initial trading tokens to go live will include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, with technical support for this service provided by encryption infrastructure startup ZeroHash.

Morgan Stanley's Entry: From encryption trading to Tokenized Future

Jed Finn, head of Morgan Stanley's wealth management business, revealed in an interview with Bloomberg that the company plans to collaborate with ZeroHash starting in the first half of next year to provide encryption asset trading services for its E-Trade clients. This move is another significant event of TradFi giant embracing encryption, following Morgan (JPMorgan)'s collaboration with Coinbase earlier this year. Finn emphasized that allowing clients to trade cryptocurrency is just the “first phase,” and the company's future goal is to establish a “robust wallet infrastructure” to meet clients' expectations of trading traditional assets and encryption assets in the same environment. With its nearly $1.7 trillion in assets under management, Morgan Stanley's entry, especially its future custody services, will bring tremendous momentum to the encryption asset management market.

ZeroHash: Empowering the encryption infrastructure of TradFi

The key to this partnership lies in ZeroHash, a company that provides infrastructure for enterprises to Cryptocurrency, stablecoin, and Tokenization solutions. ZeroHash is not only a partner of Morgan Stanley, but Morgan Stanley also participated in its latest round of funding of $104 million. ZeroHash CEO Edward Woodford has stated that the company has supported multiple projects, including the BUIDL token fund by BlackRock, highlighting its technical prowess and compliance as key factors attracting TradFi giants. Through the partnership with ZeroHash, Morgan Stanley can quickly enter the encryption market without having to build technology and regulatory frameworks from scratch.

Beyond Crypto Vision: Betting on Blockchain and Tokenization

Jed Finn said, 'Providing customers with the ability to trade Cryptocurrency is just the tip of the iceberg.' He revealed that the company also hopes to help customers hold tokenized assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate in the future. Finn believes that tokenization has the ability to 'significantly disrupt the wealth management industry.' This view coincides with current market trends, such as Galaxy Digital starting to tokenize its stocks, and Nasdaq (Nasdaq) submitting a rule change proposal to support the trading of tokenized stocks on its platform. Finn concluded that they see the 'tremendous power' in the encryption field, not only as an investment in encryption assets themselves but also in the transformative potential brought by blockchain technology and tokenization.

Conclusion

Morgan Stanley's foray into cryptocurrency trading through E-Trade is another strong proof of the accelerating integration of TradFi and digital asset worlds. This not only provides a convenient and compliant encryption investment channel for Morgan Stanley's vast retail client base, but more importantly, it sends a strong signal from Wall Street about the future potential of tokenization and blockchain technology. With more TradFi giants joining in, the infrastructure of the encryption market will become more complete, signaling that digital assets are gradually becoming part of the mainstream financial system.

Disclaimer: This article is for news information purposes and does not constitute any investment advice. The cryptocurrency market is volatile, and investors should make decisions cautiously.