Morgan Stanley has filed an application with the US regulator OCC for a dedicated national trust bank charter for digital assets. The planned subsidiary is called Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, National Association (MSDTNA). It will be headquartered at the company's corporate offices in Purchase, New York.
The application was submitted to the OCC one week ago. This new entity would offer custody, trading, swaps and transfers of digital assets, as well as staking on a fiduciary basis. As a result, the largest US wealth management bank, with roughly USD 8 trillion in AUM, positions itself as a direct provider of crypto infrastructure. The OCC comment period runs until March 20, 2026.
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Why a trust bank charter for crypto assets?
A national trust bank differs fundamentally from a traditional commercial bank. It does not accept deposits and does not issue loans. Instead, its core business covers custody, fiduciary administration and asset servicing. For Morgan Stanley, this means full federal oversight of its crypto activities without the regulatory burden of a full banking license.
Shortly before Morgan's application, the OCC published a final rule. It allows national trust banks to engage in non-fiduciary custody activities. This significantly expands the scope of permissible custody services. According to its filing, Morgan Stanley Digital Trust seeks comprehensive trust powers and intends to serve individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, and institutional clients.
The application does not stand in isolation. Back in September 2025, Morgan Stanley announced a partnership with crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash. Its goal is to enable crypto trading via the brokerage platform E*Trade and its more than 5.2 million users. Morgan Stanley acquired E*Trade in 2020 for USD 13 billion. Crypto trading is planned to launch in the first half of 2026. Zerohash itself received a valuation of USD 1 billion in a Series D round. Morgan Stanley is among its investors.
From ETF provider to full-service crypto bank
The trust bank charter is just one element of a comprehensive crypto strategy. In January 2026, Morgan Stanley filed S-1 documents for three spot ETFs: a Bitcoin Trust ETF, an Ethereum ETF and a Solana ETF. The Ethereum fund includes staking yields.
That same month, the company appointed Amy Oldenburg as Head of Digital Asset Strategy, a newly created position. Oldenburg has been with Morgan Stanley since 2001 and has worked on internal crypto projects since 2021. At the Bitcoin for Corporations Conference in Las Vegas, she spoke on February 25 about Bitcoin lending and yield products as the next phase of expansion.
The direction is clear: Morgan Stanley is building a vertically integrated crypto value chain. ETFs provide straightforward market access, E*Trade covers retail trading, and the trust bank handles custody and staking. With USD 8 trillion in AUM, even a marginal crypto allocation would generate substantial volumes. Internally, the wealth management division recommends an allocation of 2 to 4 percent depending on risk profile.
The OCC chartering boom and its critics
Morgan Stanley is far from alone. In December 2025, the OCC granted conditional charters to five crypto companies: Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos. Then in February 2026, conditional approvals followed for Crypto.com, Stripe and Protego. Applications from Coinbase and World Liberty Financial are still pending.
This surge is reflected in the numbers. OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould told the US Senate that the agency received fewer than four charter applications per year on average between 2011 and 2024. In 2025 and 2026 alone, 14 de novo applications were filed. Overall, the OCC currently oversees around 60 national trust banks.
"New entrants into the federal banking system are good for consumers, the banking industry and the economy. They provide access to new products, services and credit sources, and ensure a dynamic, competitive and diverse banking system." - Jonathan Gould, Comptroller of the Currency
Still, opposition is forming. Banking associations criticize the misuse of the trust bank charter. Their concern: crypto firms could use a national trust charter to compete with banks without being subject to equivalent oversight. For Morgan Stanley, however, this argument carries limited weight, since the company is already regulated as a systemically important bank.
Wall Street versus crypto natives
The race for trust charters marks a structural turning point. So far, crypto-native companies like Circle, Ripple and BitGo have dominated the digital custody infrastructure. With Morgan's application, one of the major Wall Street banks enters this space for the first time. And it brings a decisive advantage: existing client relationships with millions of retail and institutional investors.
Robinhood generated roughly USD 626 million from crypto trading in 2024. That accounted for 21 percent of total revenue. For Morgan Stanley, with its significantly larger client base, the potential could be considerably higher. Beyond trading fees, the focus is on custody, settlement and fiduciary services for tokenized assets. These form the back-office infrastructure of digital finance. Whoever controls them secures a central position in the future market.
A crypto-friendly regulatory stance under the Trump administration and legislative initiatives like the GENIUS Act for stablecoins have accelerated the chartering boom. Accordingly, the question has shifted from regulatory permissibility to operational execution. Morgan Stanley's OCC comment period ends on March 20, 2026. After that, the review phase begins. However, the agency has not specified a concrete timeline for its decision.
