Charles Schwab has ended years of public hesitation over cryptocurrency, announcing on Thursday that clients will soon be able to buy and sell bitcoin and ether directly through their brokerage accounts.
The offering, which Schwab is calling "Schwab Crypto," will roll out in the coming weeks and will sit alongside equities, bonds and ETFs inside existing Schwab accounts. The brokerage, which oversees more than $11 trillion in client assets, is the largest traditional Wall Street firm to offer spot crypto trading to retail clients, placing it in direct competition with crypto-friendly rivals Robinhood and Coinbase.
Schwab CEO Rick Wurster framed the launch as a response to persistent client demand. Speaking on CNBC's Money Movers last July, Wurster said: "What we hear from many of our clients is that they have 98% of their wealth here at Schwab and they might hold a percent or 2% at some digital native firm to hold their crypto, and they really want to bring it back to Schwab because they trust us and they want it to sit alongside their other assets."
That consolidation pitch is central to the product. Schwab clients will be able to hold bitcoin and ether in the same account as traditional investments, a convenience previously unavailable without using a separate crypto-native exchange.
Schwab will charge a 0.75% fee on every crypto buy and sell. That undercuts Fidelity Crypto's 1% rate and Coinbase's tiered structure, which can run as high as 4% for retail customers. Robinhood, which operates on a payment-for-order-flow model, charges between 0.03% and 0.95%.
The launch arrives as institutional barriers to crypto continue to fall. In the past two weeks alone, Morgan Stanley has launched the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, a spot bitcoin ETF trading under the ticker MSBT, and Goldman Sachs filed to launch a bitcoin income ETF. Fidelity Investments, Schwab's largest rival, has already been running a crypto trading app since 2023 and was the first retirement plan provider to allow bitcoin in 401(k)s back in 2022.
Meanwhile, the traffic is also running the other way. Coinbase began rolling out commission-free stock trading in January, and Kraken followed suit this week. The lines between traditional brokerages and crypto-native exchanges are dissolving on both sides.
The regulatory backdrop has helped. Industry figures have attributed the rush of institutional crypto products to the Trump administration's friendly stance toward digital assets, with major banks that spent years on the sidelines now feeling comfortable enough to launch offerings.
The market did not immediately reward Schwab for the announcement. Shares of the brokerage fell 5% on Thursday, weighed down by a first-quarter revenue miss reported earlier in the morning that overshadowed the crypto rollout.
Still, the strategic signal is clear. With Schwab now joining Fidelity, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in offering retail-facing crypto exposure, the separation between the traditional financial industry and the digital asset economy continues to narrow. For clients who have long wanted to consolidate their holdings in one place, the wait is nearly over.