ETH SOL Current Affairs

Morgan Stanley Just Launched Dirt-Cheap ETH and SOL ETPs With Staking Baked In

2026-07-29

Morgan Stanley Investment Management has launched two new exchange-traded products: the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (NYSE Arca: MSSE) and Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (NYSE Arca: MSOL). They track ETH and SOL respectively. Both started trading on NYSE Arca on July 28, 2026.

Here's what makes them interesting. The funds charge a market-leading 0.14% fee—the cheapest in their categories according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. Grayscale's Ether product previously charged 0.15%. For Solana, Morgan Stanley's entry lands amid eight existing SOL ETFs with combined net assets of $889.3 million.

But the real innovation isn't the fees. It's the staking mechanism. MSSE will stake between 50% and 80% of its Ethereum holdings. MSOL can stake up to 100% of its Solana holdings. Morgan Stanley expects roughly 95% of those staking rewards to flow through to shareholders. This structure separates them entirely from earlier crypto ETPs, which offered price exposure and nothing else.

Figment, an institutional staking infrastructure provider, operates the validators and manages staking for both funds. That removes the technical friction that's kept most institutional investors away from proof-of-stake networks.

This isn't Morgan Stanley's first crypto rodeo. The Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (NYSE Arca: MSBT) launched earlier this year and holds more than $381 million in assets under management as of July 16, 2026. It's the first cryptocurrency ETP from a U.S. bank-affiliated asset manager. The MSBT launched with 1.6 million shares traded and about $34 million in inflows—rapid accumulation that lent credibility to the broader push.

The real advantage, though, is distribution. Morgan Stanley has 16,000 financial advisors managing roughly $9 trillion in client assets. That network dwarfs what most crypto-native platforms can muster. Add in the E*TRADE platform, which now offers spot crypto trading alongside these ETPs, and you've got a distribution machine that smaller competitors simply can't match.

These launches are part of a broader infrastructure play. Earlier in July, Morgan Stanley added crypto trading to E*TRADE. The Bitcoin ETF came first. Tokenization plans exist. The firm isn't treating digital assets as a one-off bet. They're building an entire ecosystem.

Morgan Stanley's full ETP suite now manages more than $14 billion across 22 products. The crypto segment is still modest in absolute terms, but it's growing fast. That signals something structural has shifted in how major financial institutions view digital assets.

For investors, the combination matters. Low fees. Integrated staking. Access through established advisor networks. That's more accessible than figuring out self-custody or running validators yourself.

Source & further reading:

Sources