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Morgan Stanley just got a lot more serious about crypto. The firm’s investment management arm launched two new exchange-traded products — one tracking Ethereum, one tracking Solana — and listed both on NYSE Arca.
The funds are called the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (MSSE) and the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (MSOL). Both carry a 0.14% expense ratio, which is pretty competitive for products in this space. They track the performance of Ether and Solana using CoinDesk’s benchmark settlement rates, so there’s a clear, established methodology behind the pricing — not just some internal model. And the staking piece is probably the most interesting part of the whole structure. A portion of each fund’s holdings gets staked, and whatever rewards come back from that staking go directly to investors. Morgan Stanley keeps none of it. Zero. That’s a meaningful design choice, and it’s one that could make these products genuinely attractive to yield-seeking institutional money.
Not a small detail.
Bitcoin Trust Already Past $381 Million
To understand why this matters, you need to look at what happened earlier. Back in April, Morgan Stanley launched the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust — and it was notable enough on its own, since it made the firm the first major U.S. commercial bank to offer a spot Bitcoin ETF. By mid-July, that fund had pulled in over $381 million in assets. That’s a real number. It wasn’t a slow burn or a niche product quietly sitting on a shelf. Investors showed up, and they showed up fast.
So the Ethereum and Solana launches aren’t exactly a leap of faith. They’re basically the next logical step after watching the Bitcoin Trust do what it did. Morgan Stanley probably didn’t need much convincing internally once those AUM figures started climbing.
The mid-July $381 million figure is the clearest signal of investor appetite here. If the Bitcoin product can attract that kind of capital in a matter of months, the Ethereum and Solana trusts start from a position of credibility — both for the firm and for the market.
E*TRADE Spot Trading and the Zero Hash Partnership
The ETPs aren’t the only move Morgan Stanley made recently. Earlier in the month — before the MSSE and MSOL launched — the firm rolled out spot cryptocurrency trading on its E*TRADE platform. Eligible clients can now trade Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana directly. The infrastructure behind that is Zero Hash, a crypto infrastructure provider that handles the back-end plumbing for the trades.
It’s a different product from the trusts, but it’s clearly part of the same broader push. Morgan Stanley is basically building out a full crypto stack: spot trading on E*TRADE for clients who want direct exposure, and now exchange-traded products for those who want regulated, structured fund access. The two approaches serve different investor types, and having both probably matters.
Zero Hash isn’t a household name, but it’s been the quiet engine behind a number of institutional crypto integrations. The partnership gives Morgan Stanley a way to offer spot trading without having to build its own crypto custody and settlement rails from scratch.
Unclear whether additional currencies beyond Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana are being considered for the E*TRADE platform. No details on that.
Staking Rewards and What That Means for Investors
The staking component deserves more attention than it’s probably getting. Staking — locking up crypto holdings to help validate transactions on proof-of-stake networks — generates yield. For Ethereum and Solana, that yield is real and has historically been meaningful, though it fluctuates. The fact that Morgan Stanley is passing all of those rewards to fund investors, rather than treating them as a revenue stream for the firm, is a design choice that leans hard toward investor alignment.
It’s also a differentiator. Not every fund structured around Ethereum or Solana passes staking rewards through in full. Some keep a cut. Morgan Stanley’s decision to keep none of it is worth noting, especially for institutional investors who are already doing the math on net returns.
The 0.14% expense ratio stays low. Add staking rewards on top of that, and the total cost-benefit picture for MSSE and MSOL looks reasonably clean — at least on paper. Whether actual staking yields hold up over time is a separate question, and one nobody can really answer right now.
Crypto ETPs with staking features are still relatively new territory for major U.S. institutions. Morgan Stanley isn’t the first to explore it, but doing it at this scale, with this level of brand recognition, probably moves the conversation forward for the broader industry.
Both MSSE and MSOL are listed on NYSE Arca, which gives them the regulatory wrapper that a lot of institutional allocators need before they can even consider putting client money into something. That listing matters as much as the product design for many buyers.
The Bitcoin Trust hit $381 million by mid-July. The Ethereum and Solana products launched after that.
Hub: Ethereum price, news, and analysis
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust and Solana Trust?
They are exchange-traded products — MSSE and MSOL — launched by Morgan Stanley Investment Management and listed on NYSE Arca, designed to track the performance of Ether and Solana using CoinDesk’s benchmark settlement rates, with a 0.14% expense ratio.
Do the new Morgan Stanley crypto funds pay staking rewards to investors?
Yes. A portion of each fund’s holdings is staked, and all staking rewards are passed directly to investors — Morgan Stanley does not retain any portion of those rewards.
How much did Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust raise before the Ethereum and Solana launches?
The Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, launched in April, had accumulated over $381 million in assets by mid-July.
