[Charles Schwab has added Bitcoin, Ether trading to its $13](https://crypto.news/?p=14477897) [trillion in client assets and 39.8 million active brokerage accounts. That is the kind of distribution power crypto-native firms cannot ignore.]
- BTC and ETH are now tradable inside Schwab brokerage accounts
- Fee: 0.75% per trade
- No deposits or withdrawals at launch; transfers came later in a pilot
- Big picture: crypto is moving from standalone exchange territory into mainstream brokerage menus
The rollout began on May 13 and came in phases after an employee pilot and a waitlist. For now, eligible Schwab clients can buy and sell Bitcoin and Ether alongside stocks, ETFs, and other investments in the same account. Clients in New York and Louisiana were excluded from the initial rollout.
The setup is deliberately conservative. Schwab is not pretending this is some open-ended crypto free-for-all. It is offering spot crypto access inside a tightly controlled brokerage wrapper, with no coin deposits or withdrawals at launch. In other words: you can trade the assets, but Schwab is still very much keeping its hands on the wheel.
Why this matters
Schwab is not a crypto startup chasing a quick narrative pump. It is one of the biggest brokerage and wealth platforms in the U.S., and that makes this move strategically important. At the end of the second quarter, Schwab reported $13.1 trillion in client assets and 39.8 million active brokerage accounts. It also posted record second-quarter revenue of $7.1 billion, up 21% from a year earlier.
That scale matters because even modest crypto adoption across a base that large can redirect meaningful trading flow. The real story is not just that Schwab added Bitcoin and Ether. It is that a mainstream brokerage now considers crypto important enough to sit next to the rest of a client’s portfolio instead of off in a separate app.
Rick Wurster, Schwab’s CEO, said clients wanted crypto “alongside their stocks, bonds and cash, not off to the side on a different app.” He also said some customers asked Schwab to bring digital assets they already held elsewhere back to the brokerage because they “trusted the brokerage with their other investments.”
That is the thesis in plain English: convenience and trust beat crypto-native swagger for a lot of people. Not glamorous, but very effective.
What clients can do, and what they cannot
Schwab’s launch supports spot trading, meaning clients are buying and selling the underlying Bitcoin or Ether rather than exposure through only futures or funds. Schwab clients already had access to crypto exchange-traded products, futures, and the Schwab Crypto Thematic ETF before spot trading went live.
But the launch was not full-service crypto custody in the self-sovereign sense. There were no deposits or withdrawals at launch. Schwab later said a crypto transfers pilot was starting, which is the first step toward moving assets in and out more freely.
That staged approach makes sense. Direct crypto trading brings operational, custody, and compliance risk. A big broker has to worry about know-your-customer controls, anti-money-laundering procedures, asset safeguarding, and the simple fact that crypto transactions are usually irreversible once they are sent. That is not a place for cowboy behavior.
Wurster said Schwab was not building the service around a Bitcoin price cycle. The firm had spent months evaluating customer demand, and Schwab also said in April that it remained on schedule to introduce spot Bitcoin and Ether trading during the first half of 2026. The company later said the transfers pilot was beginning after launch.
The fee fight is getting real
Schwab is charging a 0.75% transaction fee, or 75 basis points. That is not cheap, but it is competitive in a market where pricing often gets buried in spreads, markups, and all the usual retail-finance tricks.
For comparison, Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade set a flat 50 basis point charge for its crypto service, while Fidelity’s crypto pricing is roughly a 1% spread. Those structures are not perfectly identical, so the comparisons are not apples-to-apples. Still, the message is clear: big brokers are squeezing crypto trading into a lower-margin, more transparent model than the crypto industry has often offered.
Coinbase shows the other side of that equation. In the second quarter, Coinbase reported about $452 million in consumer transaction revenue on $25.8 billion of consumer trading volume. That works out to a hefty effective take rate, and it helps explain why the brokerage crowd looks so attractive to customers who are tired of paying up for convenience. Coinbase also reported a $359.5 million net loss and another quarterly revenue miss.
The point is not to dunk on Coinbase for sport. The point is that traditional brokers are bringing crypto into a much tighter pricing environment. That is good for users and rough on the old “retail trading tollbooth” model.
Why Schwab is moving carefully
Schwab did not launch with a flashy, everything-at-once crypto suite. It started with Bitcoin and Ether, added a waitlist, used an employee pilot, and held back transfers until later. That is classic big-firm behavior: slow, controlled, and boring in the way that usually keeps regulators and risk teams from having a coronary.
The firm’s own crypto education materials are also pretty sober. Schwab has already warned clients that crypto is volatile, exchanges can be hacked, private keys can be lost, and transactions cannot be reversed once completed. That is a useful counterweight to the usual industry hype machine, which often behaves as if every chart is a straight line to the moon.
Schwab also saw that demand was already there. Wurster said in April 2025 that traffic to Schwab’s crypto website had risen 400%, with roughly 70% of visitors coming from non-clients. That suggests the opportunity is not just retention. It is also acquisition.
What Schwab is really selling
At its core, Schwab is selling consolidation. Clients already use the platform for retirement accounts, stock portfolios, cash management, and ETFs. Now they can keep Bitcoin and Ether in the same place.
That is the pitch crypto-native exchanges have to worry about. Not because they disappear overnight, but because a huge brokerage can bundle crypto into an existing relationship that already includes trust, reporting, advice, and portfolio visibility. For a lot of mainstream investors, that is more appealing than juggling another app, another login, and another custody risk surface.
Schwab clients had already held about $25 billion in crypto exchange-traded products through the platform, according to Wurster. So this was not a cold start. Schwab was bringing existing demand under its own roof and giving clients a more direct way to trade the two biggest crypto assets by market prominence.
Bitcoin itself was trading near $63, 000 at the time of the reporting, but Schwab’s digital currencies research and strategy director Jim Ferraioli said in June that Bitcoin had lost some of its momentum appeal. That does not mean demand has vanished. It means the speculation crowd may be moving on while the infrastructure layer keeps getting built.
The competitive pressure on crypto-native venues
[Schwab Switched On Crypto For 40 Million Accounts And](https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2026/08/13/schwab-switched-on-crypto-for-40-million-accounts-and-priced-it-like-an-index-fund/) is not alone. Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade has already launched Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana trading through Zerohash, and it advertises a 50 basis point commission with no added spreads or markups. Fidelity has continued building out its own crypto-related offerings as well.
The trend is easy to read: large incumbents are not trying to become crypto-first companies. They are absorbing crypto into the brokerage stack they already control. That means custody, stablecoins, tokenization, and settlement infrastructure are all becoming part of the conversation.
Schwab has also said it is evaluating stablecoins and tokenized securities, though it has not announced a stablecoin launch. A stablecoin is a crypto asset designed to hold a steady value, usually tied to the U.S. dollar. Tokenized securities are traditional assets represented on a blockchain.
Both ideas matter, but neither deserves automatic applause. Tokenization only matters if it solves a real problem better than the current system. If it just adds complexity so institutions can slap “blockchain” on a pitch deck and charge for the privilege, that is not innovation. That is expensive nonsense with better branding.
Key takeaways
-
Why does Schwab’s crypto rollout matter?
Schwab has the scale to normalize Bitcoin and Ether trading for mainstream investors. Even modest adoption across 39.8 million brokerage accounts could shift real trading flow. -
What can Schwab clients trade right now?
Eligible clients can trade spot Bitcoin and Ether inside their Schwab brokerage accounts, alongside stocks, ETFs, and other investments. -
Can clients deposit and withdraw crypto yet?
Not at launch. Schwab started without deposits or withdrawals, then began a crypto transfers pilot later. -
How does Schwab’s pricing compare?
Schwab charges 0.75% per trade. That is competitive against Fidelity’s roughly 1% spread, while E*Trade’s crypto fee is 50 basis points. -
What is the bigger threat to Coinbase?
It is not just lower fees. It is the brokerage model itself, where crypto becomes one feature inside a broader wealth platform clients already trust.
The bigger signal
This is a clean sign that crypto is moving deeper into mainstream finance. The same brokerage account where people buy index funds, park cash, and rebalance retirement money can now hold Bitcoin and Ether too.
That is good for access, good for convenience, and probably good for adoption. It also means the market is getting more institutional, more fee-compressed, and less romantic. Wall Street rarely adopts anything without taking a cut and a compliance memo along for the ride.
Still, when a firm with trillions under management decides crypto belongs in the main account menu, that is not a sideshow. It is a real institutional shift, and a reminder that digital assets are no longer easy for the old guard to dismiss.
Further reading
A few useful rabbit holes for the finance-brain and crypto-brain overlap crowd:
- How to Get Started with Crypto Trading on E*TRADE
- Discover What Sets Crypto ETPs Apart
- Charles Schwab Announces Details of Spot Crypto Trading
- Cryptocurrency
- Charles Schwab CEO says investors are cutting risk after
- Charles Schwab Bitcoin Trading by 2026, South Korea
- Schwab Crypto Launch: Direct Bitcoin Trading for 39 Million
- Charles Schwab’s $12 Trillion Bitcoin and Ether Trading
