Charles Schwab adds spot crypto trading

Crypto trading just moved one step deeper into the regular brokerage account. Charles Schwab has started rolling out Schwab Crypto, its new product for direct bitcoin and ether trading, to the first wave of eligible retail clients. That sounds incremental, but it closes a pretty obvious gap — Schwab clients could already buy crypto ETFs, crypto-related stocks, and futures, yet they still had to leave Schwab if they wanted to own the coins themselves. Now they don’t. ### What changed this week? The news is the rollout itself. Schwab said on April 16 that Schwab Crypto would launch in phases “in the coming weeks,” and by Tuesday, May 12, the first eligible retail clients were live. The product starts with spot bitcoin and spot ether trading, which means clients are buying direct exposure to those assets rather than a fund or a derivative tied to them. (theblock.co) ### Why is that different from what Schwab already had? Before this, Schwab’s crypto menu was mostly indirect. Clients could buy spot bitcoin and ether ETPs, crypto-linked stocks like Coinbase or MicroStrategy, options on some crypto securities, and futures through a separate futures setup. Useful, yes — but not the same as owning bitcoin or ether directly. Schwab Crypto is the first time Schwab has offered that direct route to retail clients under its own brand. (pressroom.aboutschwab.com) ### Is this “inside the brokerage account” or not quite? Not quite. This is the catch. Schwab is making crypto visible alongside the rest of a client’s investments across Schwab.com, Schwab Mobile, and thinkorswim, but the crypto position sits in a separate Schwab Crypto account rather than the plain vanilla brokerage account itself. So the experience is more unified, but the legal and operational plumbing is still distinct. (schwab.com) ### Who actually holds the crypto? Schwab is not doing every piece itself. Charles Schwab Premier Bank serves as the crypto custodian for the product, while Paxos handles trade execution and sub-custody. Basically, Schwab owns the client relationship and front end, but it is leaning on crypto-native infrastructure underneath. That is a common pattern for large financial firms entering the market without building every component from scratch. (pressroom.aboutschwab.com) ### What does it cost? Schwab said pricing is 75 basis points on the dollar value of each trade. That is 0.75% per transaction. Schwab is pitching that as among the lowest in the industry, but it still means the product is not trying to win on zero-fee headline pricing. It is trying to win on trust, convenience, and the fact that many clients already keep most of their money at Schwab. (theblock.co) ### Who can use it? Not every Schwab client can, at least not yet. The company says this is a phased rollout to eligible retail clients, and The Block reported the service is available in all U.S. states except New York and Louisiana. That suggests the bottleneck is less about demand and more about state-by-state compliance, account eligibility, and controlled onboarding. (pressroom.aboutschwab.com) ### Why does this matter beyond Schwab? Because scale changes the story. Schwab had $11.77 trillion in client assets and 39.1 million active brokerage accounts at the end of March 2026. When a platform that large adds direct crypto trading, crypto stops looking like a sidecar product for specialist exchanges and starts looking more like another asset class inside mainstream wealth plumbing. That does not mean Coinbase or Robinhood suddenly lose. But it does mean the old line between brokerage account and crypto venue keeps getting thinner. (pressroom.aboutschwab.com) ### Bottom line Schwab did not reinvent crypto trading. It normalized it. The real shift is that direct bitcoin and ether exposure is now arriving through one of the biggest names in U.S. retail brokerage — with familiar support, familiar interfaces, and a much lower “why do I need another account?” barrier. (pressroom.aboutschwab.com) (theblock.co)