Wall Street Firms Double Down on Crypto Amid Retail Trader Risk-Taking

Financial services firms are accelerating their investment in digital asset infrastructure and expanding retail access to crypto trading, despite concerns over the market's volatility. Eighty-four percent of senior decision-makers across wealth management, asset management, capital markets, and digital asset firms view tokenization as strategically important to their organization, according to Broadridge Financial Solutions' inaugural Tokenization Pulse Survey.

The survey polled 200 executives in the US and Canada, with 68% expecting tokenization to partially reshape financial markets within three to five years. Capital markets firms are furthest along in implementation, while asset and wealth managers are still building out capabilities. Public market funds appear to be an early adoption point, with 80% of respondents expecting tokenized mutual funds and money market funds to matter within five years.

Retail-facing platforms are also moving in step, with E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley completing the rollout of spot crypto trading this month. Eligible clients can buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana through a linked account with digital asset infrastructure provider Zero Hash at a 50 basis point fee.

However, perpetual futures risk remains a concern for retail traders, who are piling into derivatives that never expire and track an underlying asset's spot price. US regulators cleared the products for domestic trading in May, but they carry outsized risk due to the potential for losing positions to be liquidated with little warning.