Wall Street giants are triggering a massive fee war that could crush crypto exchange margins

Immediately after Morgan Stanley announced it was rolling out E*Trade, charging a mere 50 basis points undercutting established rivals Coinbase, Robinhood and Schwab, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said “crypto exchanges should be scared.”

Others were less blunt, saying the Wall Street giant’s “isn’t entering crypto to complement Coinbase—it’s entering to replace it…”

The battle for cheap crypto trading resembles the trading fee race when spot ETFs launched in 2024, which saw providers begin high, offering 50 basis points before Morgan Stanley undercut them all with a 14 basis point offering.

In the long run, this means that trading crypto will be cheaper, where the clear winners will be retail traders, while crypto exchanges see their margins significantly trimmed, potentially affecting the likes of Coinbase, who recently cited financial issues as a reason for to reduce its workforce by 14%.

When announcing E*Trade, Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley’s head of wealth management, suggested the move was more about dominance than control. “This is much bigger than trading crypto at a cheaper rate.

“In a way, the strategy is disintermediating the disintermediators.” He added: “It’s going to be very competitive in the next couple of years,” explaining the move is aimed at ensuring its 8.6 million clients remain within its banking system instead of resorting to other platforms as the demand for crypto increases.

In his X post last week, Balchunas echoed Finn’s sentiment, framing the Wall Street giant’s move as a “SHOTS FIRED” moment. “Morgan Stanley is rolling out crypto trading on its E*Trade platform for 50bps per trade, undercutting Schwab’s 75bps (who undercut Coinbase).”

He said that based on his knowledge of how Schwab works, it will “likely won’t let this stand. Others will probably undercut too.” He also said that “by the time the dust settles it’ll be pretty dirt cheap to trade crypto everywhere.” Before concluding by saying “this is why (traditional financial) TradFi is no joke and crypto exchanges should be scared.”

However, crypto-native leaders rebuffed the “doom and gloom” narrative as U.S.-centric.

“While we respect Eric Balchunas’s insights on TradFi’s push into crypto, the perspective feels somewhat localized to the U.S. market and oversimplified for quick engagements on X,” said Kevin Lee, chief business officer at Gate, which ranks seventh on Coingecko with a 24 hour volume of nearly $2 billion.

Lee also told CoinDesk that Balchunas’ comments do not “fully capture the mature, global evolution of the crypto industry.”

The Gate CBO explained that the recent moves by the Wall Street giants to cut spot trading fees reflects the ongoing reduction of commissions that is normal to see when competition intensifies.

“This mirrors long-established patterns in equities markets, where fierce competition naturally compresses fees,” Lee said. “Smart platforms moved on long ago from fee-only models to diversified revenue streams including staking, structured products, institutional services, and ecosystem growth.”

Georgii Verbitskii, derivatives trader and founder of TYMIO, a non-custodial decentralized finance (DeFI) protocol, told CoinDesk he believes Morgan Stanley’s move into crypto trading is a good sign.

“This is clearly positive for crypto adoption overall,” Verbitskii said. “Morgan Stanley bringing crypto trading to millions of brokerage users is another sign that digital assets are becoming part of mainstream investment infrastructure, although the 50 bps fee itself is not especially competitive.”

Keneabasi Umoren, a crypto market analyst and Web3 researcher, recently told CoinDesk, he does not believe Wall Street will “kill exchanges, but it will squeeze U.S. spot-trading and custody revenue and push exchanges further into derivatives, DeFi and global markets.”