Charles Schwab, one of the largest US brokerages with $12.22 trillion in client assets, announced it will roll out direct spot trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum for retail investors. The service will arrive in phases over the coming weeks through a dedicated crypto account linked to the existing brokerage platform. Until now, Schwab offered only ETFs, futures, and funds tied to digital assets.
Terms and details
The fee is 75 basis points (0.75%) per transaction. That puts it above Kraken, where fees start at 0.25-0.40%, and roughly in line with Coinbase for lower-volume traders (0.40-0.60%). Clients will access the service through Schwab's web, mobile, and Thinkorswim platforms.
Why Paxos
Trade execution goes through Paxos, a New York-based trust company with a federal license that already serves several major financial players. Schwab chose this route to skip building its own crypto infrastructure from scratch and get established regulatory coverage instead.
Assets are held in Schwab's banking subsidiary under a custodial model. Clients see their crypto holdings alongside stocks and other investments in a single interface. By the firm's own estimates, its clients already hold about 20% of all spot crypto ETPs in the US - demand is clearly there.
Wall Street moves to direct trading
Schwab is not alone in 2026. Morgan Stanley launched a spot Bitcoin ETF (MSBT) on April 8, pulling in $30.6 million on its first trading day on NYSE Arca. By April 15, the fund had grown to $87.6 million in total net assets. Goldman Sachs, for its part, filed with the SEC for a Bitcoin Premium ETF built around an options strategy to cap volatility.
The difference in approach matters. An ETF puts a fund between the client and the asset. Schwab's offering gives clients direct ownership - they buy actual Bitcoin, not a share in a fund. That brings a traditional broker much closer to how crypto-native exchanges have always worked.
Plans to expand
Schwab plans to grow the coin list and add deposit and withdrawal support for external wallets. That feature is absent at launch. Without it, the firm cannot fully compete with dedicated crypto platforms where moving funds between wallets is a basic standard.
Millions of new buyers for BTC and ETH
Schwab serves tens of millions of Americans. Once spot crypto appears inside a familiar brokerage app, the main barrier - signing up on a separate platform - goes away. For Bitcoin and Ethereum, that adds another major retail channel, this time through one of the country's largest financial firms.
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