Yesterday, April 16, Charles Schwab officially launched Schwab Crypto — and with it, spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading became available to 39 million retail brokerage clients managing $12 trillion in assets.
Charles Schwab announced the planned launch of its spot crypto trading platform, Schwab Crypto, on April 16. The platform offers Bitcoin and Ethereum trading to Schwab's retail clients from within the existing platform, alongside traditional investments. The phased rollout begins in the coming weeks, and will let Schwab's existing brokerage customers buy and hold BTC and ETH directly within their accounts. Trading will be priced at 75 basis points.
Let's talk about what 75 basis points actually means in context. Paxos, an OCC-regulated blockchain infrastructure provider, will handle sub-custody and trade execution. Schwab Crypto accounts will operate separately from traditional brokerage holdings while remaining linked within the same ecosystem.
The rollout comes with a few early constraints — depositing and withdrawing digital assets will be disabled on launch, clients will have to purchase BTC or ETH directly through Schwab, and the service will be unavailable for New York and Louisiana residents. Schwab said it plans to expand the platform over time, including adding more cryptocurrencies and enabling transfers, but no specific timeline was offered.
Think about the typical Schwab client for a moment. Retirement accounts. 401(k)s. Taxable brokerage portfolios holding index funds alongside individual stocks. These are not crypto-native investors. Many of them have been curious about Bitcoin for years but never opened a Coinbase account because the friction was too high. Now they don't have to.
The combination of Morgan Stanley's MSBT ETF launched last week with Fidelity's established crypto offering and now Schwab Crypto means that in the span of two weeks, three of the largest financial institutions in America have given their combined client bases — tens of millions of ordinary investors — direct access to Bitcoin.
This is not a niche story. This is the infrastructure layer of mainstream crypto adoption clicking into place. Not through DeFi protocols or meme coins. Through the same brokerage interface where people already manage their retirement money.
Coinbase, Robinhood, and Kraken just got a serious distribution competitor. The fee war in crypto is coming, and it's being fought by Wall Street now.