The news: Morgan Stanley recently applied for a national bank trust charter to let it custody cryptocurrencies and provide trading and staking for US clients. The new entity would be called “Morgan Stanley Digital Trust.”

Zoom out: Morgan Stanley has $1.9 trillion in assets under management (AUM) and reported $18.6 billion in trading revenue in 2025. A national trust charter application signals its intent to move into crypto custody and trading on a very large scale. Before the trust charter filing, it had already planned a rollout this year of retail spot crypto trading on E*TRADE in partnership with a crypto infrastructure provider. And it hinted at bigger plans:

• Morgan Stanley would compete directly with Fidelity, a company years ahead of the crypto curve: Fidelity launched crypto operations in 2019 and is the only traditional asset manager to have received a (conditional) national trust charter. It had AUM of $7.1 trillion at the end of 2025.
• Morgan Stanley would also compete directly with the trading desks and custody businesses at some megabanks. In 2024, BNY was the first major US bank to offer digital asset custody. And later this year, Citi plans to launch institutional Bitcoin custody. In addition, JPMorgan is considering offering crypto trading for institutional clients.

Implications for banks and asset managers: Traditional and decentralized finance are becoming almost inextricably connected as legacy institutions embrace crypto as a core financial service—not just an abstract experiment with blockchains.

At the institutional level, it would be prudent to embrace crypto services, which are increasingly table stakes for the largest financial services firms.