Charles Schwab began a phased rollout of spot bitcoin and ethereum trading on April 16, 2026, opening a waitlist to its 39 million active brokerage accounts sitting on $12.22 trillion in client assets. The move follows Morgan Stanley's announcement that E*Trade will add BTC, ETH, and SOL trading ...
"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." — Rick Wurster, CEO, Charles Schwab
Charles Schwab began a phased rollout of spot bitcoin and ethereum trading on April 16, 2026, opening a waitlist to its 39 million active brokerage accounts sitting on $12.22 trillion in client assets. The move follows Morgan Stanley's announcement that E*Trade will add BTC, ETH, and SOL trading in the first half of 2026 via infrastructure provider Zerohash. Goldman Sachs filed on April 14 for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, a covered-call product layered on top of spot BTC ETFs. Fidelity, which launched crypto trading in 2023, now lists five digital assets including its own stablecoin, FIDD.
The net effect: four of the five largest U.S. wealth management firms by client assets now offer or have announced direct cryptocurrency trading services. The combined client base exceeds 100 million accounts and roughly $30 trillion in assets. Schwab's 0.75% per-trade fee positions it well above crypto-native exchange rates but below Fidelity's approximately 1% spread markup, setting the stage for a fee compression cycle across the traditional brokerage industry.
Schwab's crypto product, branded "Schwab Crypto," launched on April 16, 2026 with an employee-first pilot. A limited group of clients drawn from a public waitlist will follow before a broader rollout through Q2 2026. At launch, only bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) are available.
The product operates through Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB, which serves as custodian. Paxos, an OCC-regulated digital asset infrastructure provider, handles sub-custody and trade execution. Trading is available via Schwab.com, the Schwab Mobile app, and the thinkorswim platform, with 24/7 phone and chat support.
Key restrictions at launch:
The closed-loop design — buy through Schwab, hold at Schwab, sell through Schwab — mirrors the custodial model Fidelity adopted in 2023. It maximizes regulatory control and asset retention but offers none of the self-custody or on-chain functionality available through crypto-native platforms.
Schwab CEO Rick Wurster cited a 400% increase in traffic to Schwab's crypto website and a 90% year-over-year increase in visits to crypto-related pages as justification for the launch timing. The company's Q1 2026 earnings report noted that Schwab clients already hold approximately 20% of all U.S. spot crypto exchange-traded products.
The traditional brokerage crypto market is now a four-way race. Here is where each major player stands as of mid-April 2026:
Charles Schwab — 39 million accounts, $12.22 trillion client assets. Spot BTC and ETH trading launched April 16, 2026 via Schwab Crypto. Fee: 0.75% per trade. Custody: Paxos (sub-custody), Schwab Premier Bank (custodian). No crypto deposits/withdrawals.
Morgan Stanley / E*Trade — E*Trade plans to launch BTC, ETH, and SOL trading in H1 2026. Infrastructure partner: Zerohash, which raised $104 million in a Series D-2 round that included participation from Morgan Stanley. Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley's Head of Wealth Management, has described the trading launch as "phase one," with plans for a proprietary wallet solution and tokenized asset support to follow. Fee structure not yet disclosed.
Fidelity Investments — $4.5 trillion in AUM. Operational since 2023 via Fidelity Crypto. Currently lists BTC, ETH, SOL, LTC, and the Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), a stablecoin launched in February 2026. Spread markup of approximately 1%. Also offers crypto IRAs with no trading fees. Fidelity Digital Assets provides institutional custody.
Goldman Sachs — Filed April 14, 2026 for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, a covered-call product that invests in spot BTC ETFs (primarily BlackRock's IBIT) and sells call options against 40-100% of the position to generate monthly yield. Not direct spot trading, but the filing signals Goldman's deepening crypto commitment. If approved within the SEC's standard 75-day window, the fund could launch by late June 2026.
For context, Robinhood — the bridge between traditional and crypto-native — reported that crypto contributed more than 27% of total revenue in its most recent quarter, with transaction revenue of $252 million, doubling year-over-year. Its Q1 2026 results are scheduled for April 28.
The fee gap between traditional brokerages and crypto-native exchanges remains significant:
| Platform | Type | BTC Trading Fee | |----------|------|----------------| | Schwab Crypto | Brokerage | 0.75% per trade | | Fidelity Crypto | Brokerage | ~1.0% spread | | Robinhood Crypto | Fintech | Spread-based (est. 0.4-0.8%) | | Coinbase Advanced | Crypto-native | 0.40% maker / 0.60% taker | | Kraken Pro | Crypto-native | 0.16% maker / 0.26% taker |
At Schwab's 0.75% fee, a $10,000 bitcoin purchase costs $75 in trading fees. The same trade on Kraken Pro costs $16-$26. On Coinbase Advanced, $40-$60.
Traditional brokerages are not competing on price. They are competing on trust, integration, and convenience. Schwab's pitch is that clients can view crypto alongside stocks, bonds, and ETFs in a single account relationship. That integration premium is worth 3-5x the cost of a crypto-native exchange, according to Schwab's implicit pricing.
Whether that premium is sustainable depends on fee compression. When Schwab introduced zero-commission stock trading in October 2019, it triggered an industry-wide race to zero that forced TD Ameritrade, ETrade, and others to follow within days. Crypto fees may follow a similar trajectory, particularly as ETrade and additional entrants add competitive pressure.
The brokerage migration into crypto trading is occurring against a backdrop of rapidly clarifying U.S. regulation:
This regulatory environment makes crypto trading a lower-risk product addition for broker-dealers that already operate within the SEC and FINRA framework. The combination of OCC-chartered custody providers, clearer securities classifications, and political support from the current administration has removed many of the compliance barriers that kept firms like Schwab on the sidelines for years.
The entry of $30+ trillion in traditional brokerage assets into the crypto trading market creates both opportunity and threat for crypto-native platforms.
The threat: Retail flow diversion. If even 1% of Schwab's $12.22 trillion in client assets rotates into crypto through the Schwab Crypto product, that represents $122 billion — larger than all but the top three spot crypto exchanges by assets. Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini face the prospect of losing casual retail traders who prefer the convenience of a single brokerage relationship.
The opportunity: Infrastructure. Paxos powers Schwab's execution and sub-custody. Zerohash powers E*Trade. Both are crypto-native infrastructure companies that benefit from every traditional brokerage entry. The "picks and shovels" layer of crypto — custody, execution, settlement — is being monetized at scale regardless of which front-end wins the retail relationship.
The constraint: Traditional brokerages are offering a limited, custodial product. No self-custody, no DeFi access, no on-chain activity. Users who want to stake ETH, provide liquidity, use decentralized exchanges, or interact with smart contracts will continue to need crypto-native wallets and platforms. The brokerage product serves allocation — not participation.
According to Coinbase Institutional, 76% of global institutional investors planned to expand digital asset exposure in 2026, and nearly 60% expected to allocate over 5% of AUM to crypto. That demand is large enough to sustain both traditional and crypto-native channels, at least in the near term.
The traditional brokerage industry's entry into spot crypto trading marks a structural shift in how U.S. retail investors access digital assets. Schwab's launch is not a speculative experiment. It is a response to measurable client demand — 400% traffic increases, 20% of spot crypto ETP holdings already sitting in Schwab accounts — executed through a regulated custody stack with an established infrastructure partner.
The competitive implications are straightforward. Brokerages will absorb a meaningful share of passive, allocation-oriented crypto demand from retail investors who want bitcoin next to their index funds. Crypto-native platforms will retain users who need on-chain functionality, broader token selection, and self-custody.
The fee structure tells the story. At 0.75%, Schwab is not trying to be Kraken. It is trying to be the default for the 98% of client wealth that Rick Wurster says is already at Schwab. Whether that fee holds as E*Trade, Fidelity, and future entrants compete for the same client base is the question that will define the next 12 months of retail crypto distribution.