Schwab's direct Bitcoin and Ethereum trading, live since May 13, adds a 0.75% fee line to a $13.08 trillion client base. Rival brokerages are pushing in.
Charles Schwab (SCHW) has started letting clients trade Bitcoin and Ethereum directly, adding a fee stream to a brokerage that held $13.08 trillion in client assets at the end of June. Shares rose 0.16% in pre-market trading to $109.52, after a 1.52% gain Wednesday.
Qualified clients can buy the two tokens through the same interface Schwab already uses for stocks and ETFs. Schwab charges 0.75% per digital asset trade. Charles Schwab Premier Bank is the custodian for client crypto holdings. Paxos supplies the execution technology and sub-custody.
At launch, the service did not support deposits or withdrawals. Schwab has since started piloting transfers after positive client feedback, executives said during the July earnings presentation. Ethereum went live the same day as Bitcoin, through the same platform.
Direct trading extends an existing relationship with digital assets rather than building a separate platform. Before direct trading, Schwab clients held about $25 billion in crypto-linked exchange-traded products on the brokerage. Direct access gives those investors a way to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum without opening an account somewhere else, and it keeps more of their wealth inside Schwab's own system.
Scale is the advantage. Schwab serviced 39.8 million active brokerage accounts as of June, including 1.4 million added in the quarter. Core net new assets came to about $120 billion. Those accounts give the crypto service a channel that a standalone exchange would have to buy.
Core brokerage results are strong too. Second-quarter revenue reached a record $7.1 billion, up 21% from a year earlier. Daily average revenue trades rose 57% to 11.9 million. The crypto product adds transaction fees on top of that volume.
Product lineup is narrow. Trading is limited to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Retail staking is not offered. Schwab executives have said the firm is discussing stablecoin options and reviewing the wider digital-asset market. They have suggested more services could follow if client interest builds.
Fidelity already offers crypto trading. Morgan Stanley (MS), through ETrade, has added Bitcoin and Ethereum. Solana is also on ETrade's menu. Schwab's entry puts it on roughly the same footing as those brokerages and gives Schwab a reason to pitch account consolidation.
Custody runs through Schwab Premier Bank, which holds client crypto directly. The $25 billion in existing crypto ETP exposure sits with fund sponsors and their custodians. Direct holdings sit with Schwab itself. A transfer failure or security problem would land on Schwab's own operating record, not a third party's.
Transfer capability is the first concrete marker. It has moved from unavailable to a pilot. New assets and staking are the obvious next steps. Stablecoin products remain under discussion. Downside scenarios include a security incident in the custody chain and a rule change restricting broker-run crypto programs. Neither has happened.
SCHW carries an Alpha Score of 52, labeled Mixed, on AlphaScala's risk-adjusted ranking. Morgan Stanley scores 56, Moderate. More detail is on the SCHW stock page and the MS stock page.
No date has been set for adding assets beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.
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