Charles Schwab Expands Retail Crypto Access With Direct Bitcoin and Ether Trading

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Charles Schwab has added direct spot trading of Bitcoin and Ether to its retail brokerage accounts, charging a flat 0.75% per trade through Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB, with Paxos handling execution and custody. The rollout began in phases on May 13, 2026, placing crypto inside the same account, login and mobile app that Schwab’s nearly 40 million retail clients, holding a combined $13.1 trillion in assets, already use for stocks, bonds and cash, while the firm also expands its offerings with Charles Schwab S&P 500 options. It also places crypto outside the protections those other holdings carry. Schwab’s own disclosures state that the cryptocurrency held through the service is not a deposit, not FDIC-insured, not SIPC-protected, and carries the risk of total loss of principal.

Schwab Builds Crypto Into Its Core Brokerage Experience

Schwab has been building toward this for close to two years. In November 2024, incoming chief executive Rick Wurster told reporters the firm would move into spot crypto once regulation allowed it. By July 2025, he was more direct on CNBC, saying clients wanted their crypto to sit alongside their stocks, bonds and cash, not off to the side on a different app, and confirming the firm intended to compete with Coinbase for that business.

Jonathan Craig, Schwab’s head of retail investing, used the same framing when the company formally announced the launch in April 2026: “We know our clients want to conduct more of their financial lives at Schwab.” Schwab said the design followed a survey of nearly 500 crypto investors who ranked pricing transparency, brand trust and asset security as their top priorities, and Joe Vietri, the firm’s head of digital assets, said the goal was to be the destination of choice for retail investors in crypto.

Bitcoin Sits in the Bank, Not the Broker-Dealer

That one-account framing has a structural limit. Schwab’s securities and cash sit with its SIPC-covered broker-dealer. The new crypto product sits instead with Charles Schwab Premier Bank, a separate banking subsidiary, with Paxos handling sub-custody and trade execution under federal banking oversight.

• The service launched with Bitcoin and Ether only.
• No way to deposit or withdraw crypto to an outside wallet.
• No access for residents of New York or Louisiana.

Schwab discloses all of that, alongside the total-loss warning, in its own account materials. A client who moves from a stock trade to a Bitcoin trade without changing tabsThe change removes FDIC backing from cash that previously carried it, shifting that money under SIPC coverage instead. Taken together, the two moves run in opposite directions at the same institution within the same year: one product loses a federal insurance backstop it used to have, and another launches without ever having one. A client checking what is protected inside a single Schwab login now has to track two separate answers, both of which changed in 2026. or logging into anything new is also moving from one legal protection regime into a different one, with none of the same guarantees attached.

A Fifth of the Crypto ETP Market, Before This Launch Existed

The client base this affects is not small or new to crypto. Wurster has said Schwab clients already held about $25 billion in crypto exchange-traded products before spot trading existed, and Schwab’s own figures put its client base at roughly a fifth of the entire crypto ETP market.

Separately, Schwab’s 2025 Modern Wealth Survey, fielded last spring among 2,000 Americans, found that:

• 35% currently own cryptocurrency
• Another 11% used to own cryptocurrency
• Combined, 46% have current or past crypto ownership

Schwab’s crypto trading service launched into a client base that was already this deep in the asset class, just holding it through ETPs and other platforms instead of a Schwab-labeled Bitcoin trade.

The Same Company Just Moved the Other Line, Too

Schwab is not new to redrawing where federal protection starts and stops. On August 8, 2026, less than three months after the crypto rollout began, the firm said it would move swept cash out of FDIC-insured Schwab One balances and into an SIPC-only Investor Checking product, effective as soon as September 8.

The change removes FDIC backing from cash that previously carried it, shifting that money under SIPC coverage instead. Taken together, the two moves run in opposite directions at the same institution within the same year: one product loses a federal insurance backstop it used to have, and another launches without ever having one. A client checking what is protected inside a single Schwab login now has to track two separate answers, both of which changed in 2026.

What Happens the First Time Bitcoin Drops Inside That Account

Schwab has said it plans to extend crypto trading, transfers and custody to its independent advisor platform by mid-2027, and a transfer pilot is already underway. That will put more accounts, including ones managed by financial advisors on a client’s behalf, inside the same coverage gap before it gets any simpler.

What has not been tested yet is what happens the first time a client’s Bitcoin position drops sharply inside an account that, for every other asset in it, has spent decades training people to expect a federal backstop that is not there this time.

The broader issue also sits within growing concerns around Bitcoin infrastructure attacks, as exchanges, custodians, wallets and other services connected to the Bitcoin ecosystem remain exposed to security threats.