Charles Schwab expands crypto trading beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum

Charles Schwab is not tiptoeing into crypto anymore. On August 27, the brokerage giant announced plans to add spot trading for Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink to its Schwab Crypto platform, expanding a lineup that launched just three months earlier with only Bitcoin and Ethereum.

From two tokens to five

Schwab Crypto launched in May 2026, offering direct spot trading for BTC and ETH to retail clients through Charles Schwab Premier Bank. The platform uses Paxos for trade execution and sub-custody, the same infrastructure backbone that powers several other institutional-grade crypto products.

The fee structure sits at 0.75% per trade, which is higher than many dedicated crypto exchanges but competitive for the traditional finance crowd that finds the idea of a separate crypto-native account mildly exhausting.

SOL, AVAX, and LINK will be added in the coming months, bringing the total token count to five. Joe Vietri, Head of Digital Assets at Schwab, said the expansion gives clients more ways to fold digital assets into their broader investment and banking picture, all within infrastructure they already use.

The token selection was not random. Schwab said the choices reflect both client demand and a deliberate preference for well-established digital assets.

Markets noticed. In the 24 hours after the announcement, SOL surged more than 9%. AVAX and LINK posted smaller but still meaningful gains.

Why Schwab’s footprint makes this significant

Numbers help put the weight of this announcement in perspective. Schwab has approximately 39.8 million active brokerage accounts and manages approximately $13.1 trillion in client assets.

More telling is an existing data point: Schwab clients already account for roughly 20% of the spot crypto exchange-traded product market. These are not people who needed convincing that crypto belongs in a portfolio. They were already there, just using ETFs as the vehicle. Schwab is now handing them a direct seat at the table.

The platform is not available everywhere. Users in New York and Louisiana cannot access Schwab Crypto, a carve-out that reflects the continued patchwork of state-level licensing requirements that even the largest financial institutions have to navigate.

Schwab has also committed to continuing to expand its digital asset offerings as client demand evolves.

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