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Morgan Stanley has applied for a national trust bank card to provide digital currency custody services directly to its institutional clients, marking a major escalation in Wall Street’s push into the digital asset sector.
The $9 trillion banking giant submitted the new request to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on February 18.
Morgan Stanley’s new OCC attempt to take over BitGo and Anchorage
If approved, Morgan Stanley will become a direct competitor to…Native cryptocurrency wallets like BitGo and Anchorage Digital, while testing the limits of traditional banking sector regulation.
indicate Application process This will fundamentally change the landscape of competition. While the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has previously granted conditional trust charters to companies focused on digital currencies, a large traditional financial institution receiving full approval represents a major relaxation of regulatory oversight.
Industry analysts attribute this renewed impetus to the Trump administration’s efforts to provide clearer federal guidelines for traditional financial institutions that want to enter the digital asset space.
Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, said that people will be shocked this year – the largest institutions and companies in the world will be fully involved in cryptocurrencies.
At the same time, Morgan Stanley’s presentation presents ambitious plans to offer custody, trading and staking services under one roof.
In this context, the submission of an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is part Binary digital asset strategy That clearly distinguishes between institutional wealth management and individual business operations.
On the institutional side, the bank is actively investing in blockchain infrastructure. A recent job posting for an engineering manager showed that Morgan Stanley is building a platform for decentralized finance and tokenization of real assets.
The role required experience in public blockchain networks such as Ethereum and Polygon, and private and permissioned networks such as Hyperledger and Canton.
This highlights the bank’s intention to link closed institutional assets to the liquidity of public networks.
At the same time, Morgan Stanley is preparing for a massive expansion in the retail sector.
The company plans to launch a direct cryptocurrency trading service via the eTrade platform in the first half of 2026, while providing Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana to retail investors.
The eTrade integration poses a direct challenge to retail-oriented platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood.
In fact, this dual approach highlights a broader trend among the giants of the traditional financial sector.
Take advantage of a more lenient regulatory environment in Washington as traditional banks dramatically accelerate their cryptocurrency journey . And now hire specialized talent in Web3 and Moving from simply facilitating ETF trading to developing the underlying infrastructure.
