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Points of Focus
- Schwab is adding SOL, AVAX, and LINK to spot trading.
- The brokerage serves 39 million accounts and manages over $12 trillion in assets.
- Paxos provides sub-custody and trade execution infrastructure.
Charles Schwab is widening its spot crypto offering beyond Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), with plans to add Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK) to Schwab Crypto in the coming months.
The Aug. 27 announcement marks the brokerage’s first expansion since direct crypto trading began rolling out in May. Once the three assets go live, Schwab customers will be able to buy and sell five cryptocurrencies directly alongside stocks and other investments through Schwab.com, Schwab Mobile, and Thinkorswim.
The rollout matters because of Schwab’s distribution. The financial institution oversees more than $12 trillion in client assets and serves about 39 million active brokerage accounts, giving SOL, AVAX, and LINK access to a large pool of investors who may prefer buying crypto through an established brokerage rather than opening an account with a crypto-native exchange.
Charles Schwab, One of the Largest U.S. Brokerages, to Add Spot Trading for SOL, AVAX and LINK
Charles Schwab announced that it plans to add three digital assets—Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK)—to its crypto trading platform Schwab Crypto over the coming… pic.twitter.com/H3MJ5ffjHi
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 27, 2026
Schwab moves beyond its Bitcoin- and Ether-only strategy
Schwab entered direct spot trading cautiously.
Its May launch was limited to BTC and ETH, which together represented roughly three-quarters of total crypto market capitalization at the time. Schwab said it had selected the two assets partly because of their scale and familiarity.
Adding SOL, AVAX, and LINK broadens that approach into three different areas of the crypto market.
Solana is one of the largest smart-contract networks and has become a major venue for decentralized trading, stablecoins, and consumer applications. Avalanche is pushing deeper into institutional blockchain infrastructure and custom layer-1 networks, while Chainlink provides oracle and interoperability technology used across decentralized finance and tokenized-asset projects.
Schwab said the additions were selected from established cryptocurrencies that align with customer demand. Head of digital assets Joe Vietri said the expansion would give clients more ways to build digital-asset exposure within their existing Schwab investing and banking relationship.
SOL reacted most strongly to the announcement, rising as much as 5% intraday, while LINK gained around 4% and AVAX also traded higher.
Paxos handles the crypto infrastructure
Schwab is not building the entire trading stack itself.
Schwab Crypto accounts are offered through Charles Schwab Premier Bank, which acts as custodian for clients’ digital assets. Paxos, a US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency-regulated infrastructure provider, supplies sub-custody and trade execution services.
Trading currently costs 75 basis points, or 0.75%, of each transaction’s dollar value.
Clients also cannot yet freely send their crypto into or out of Schwab. The company said at launch that deposit and withdrawal functionality would be added over time, which means the current product operates more like an investment account than a self-custody-oriented crypto exchange.
Schwab has said additional cryptocurrencies and digital assets will follow SOL, AVAX, and LINK, although it has not disclosed which tokens are next.
Traditional brokerages are competing directly with crypto exchanges
The expansion adds pressure to Coinbase, Kraken, and other crypto exchanges that have historically offered a much broader asset selection.
Schwab cannot yet compete on token count, but it has something crypto-native platforms have spent years trying to build: an existing relationship with tens of millions of traditional investors.
Even before launching direct spot trading, Schwab said its customers already held approximately 20% of US spot crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs), showing that demand for digital assets was already substantial within its brokerage base.
Its customers can also access crypto futures, options on spot crypto ETPs, and funds holding digital-asset-related companies.
The addition of SOL, AVAX, and LINK, therefore, signals a shift from offering indirect crypto exposure toward building a broader spot market inside the same account investors use for conventional assets.
For the three tokens, Schwab’s decision does not guarantee major new inflows. But getting direct placement inside a brokerage controlling more than $12 trillion in client assets removes another barrier between established US investors and large-cap cryptocurrencies outside Bitcoin and Ether.
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