Schwab Opens SOL, AVAX and LINK Trading, but Skips Staking

• Schwab Crypto clients can now trade Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink directly.
• The launch completes a plan Schwab first announced in August.
• Every trade carries a 0.75% fee and the platform offers no staking.
• Residents of New York and Louisiana still cannot open Schwab Crypto accounts.

Charles Schwab, the US brokerage that oversees $13.33 trillion in client assets, switched on direct trading for Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Chainlink (LINK) on November 9, raising the number of cryptocurrencies in its Schwab Crypto accounts from two to five. Eligible clients can now buy and sell the three tokens on Schwab.com, the Schwab Mobile app and thinkorswim, next to their stocks and funds. That gives a large pool of traditional investors a way to own altcoins outright without opening an account at a crypto exchange.

The August Pledge Became a Live Product

On August 27, Schwab said the three tokens would join Bitcoin and Ethereum “in the coming months” and gave no date. Traders bought the news straight away. SOL rose nearly 13% within 24 hours, LINK gained 5.5% and AVAX added 3.6%, while Bitcoin rose 2.1% on a day when the whole market was climbing. Most of the listing effect was therefore spent ten weeks ago, so Monday’s launch tests how well Schwab executes more than it gives the tokens a new reason to move. Monday’s launch landed in a falling market, with Bitcoin sliding toward $74,000 as more than $1 billion in leveraged long positions were liquidated in 24 hours, and SOL traded roughly 3% lower despite the news.

Joe Vietri, who heads digital assets at Schwab, presented the expansion as a way for clients to manage crypto in the same place as the rest of their portfolio. The company again said it would add more digital assets over time, but it did not name any or give a timetable.

Who Holds the Coins When a Client Buys SOL

Schwab did not add a third-party crypto exchange to its website. The accounts are offered by Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB, a savings bank inside the Schwab group that acts as the custodian clients deal with. Behind it, Paxos runs trade execution and sub-custody. In practice the New York-regulated trust company stores the tokens and routes orders on the bank’s behalf, and the bank stays responsible to the client. Clients see their SOL or LINK in a separate crypto account linked to their brokerage account, and they can place market, limit, stop and stop-limit orders.

That design comes with two limits. The holdings carry no FDIC insurance or SIPC protection, even though the bank is an FDIC member, and Schwab warns that clients can lose their entire principal. The platform also offers no staking. Staking is how SOL and AVAX holders lock up tokens to help secure the network, and they receive newly issued tokens as a reward, so a Schwab client misses out on income that holders on many crypto exchanges earn. Token deposits and withdrawals were on the roadmap Schwab published in April, but the company has not said they are live.

Source: Charles Schwab

A 0.75% Fee Changes the Math

Schwab charges 0.75% of the value of every crypto trade and advertises no spread. A $10,000 purchase of SOL costs $75 in fees, and selling the same position costs another $75, so a round trip uses up $150 before any price move. Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade began offering spot trading in BTC, ETH and SOL in July and charges 0.50%.

For long-term holders, the better comparison is with spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The largest US spot Bitcoin ETFs charge about 0.25% a year, and Schwab clients buy them without commission. On that basis, one round trip through Schwab Crypto costs about as much as six years of ETF fees. Schwab’s own clients already use the fund route heavily: in April, the company estimated they held about 20% of all assets in US spot crypto exchange-traded products. Owning the token directly, in the same account as everything else, appeals more to active traders than to investors who buy and hold.

Why Schwab Picked SOL, AVAX and LINK

Schwab has not explained how it chose each token and cites client demand. The three still cover different parts of the market. Solana is a high-throughput blockchain used for payments, stablecoin transfers and consumer apps, and Schwab already offered exposure to it through the round-the-clock Solana futures it added to thinkorswim in June. Avalanche lets institutions launch their own customized blockchains, and that feature has been used in tokenized-fund pilots. Chainlink works differently from the other two. It feeds blockchains outside data such as asset prices, and its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) moves tokens and messages between networks.

Schwab’s AVAX listing landed on the same day as a bigger Avalanche headline. NYSE said on November 9 that Avalanche will provide the core ledger technology for the clearing firm supporting its planned tokenized securities venue, an alternative trading system where blockchain versions of stocks are expected to trade around the clock. Trades will still be matched on NYSE’s existing Pillar engine, and Avalanche will record and settle them. The decision follows roughly a year of testing, and the venue will also accept equities issued on other blockchains. AVAX jumped as much as 10% after the NYSE news, so any price move in the token on Monday reflects both announcements.

Listing a token gives clients access to it. It says nothing about whether Schwab plans to settle its own business on Solana, Avalanche or Chainlink.

Distribution Is What Schwab Brings

Schwab ended September with 40.3 million active brokerage accounts. It took in $190.4 billion of core net new assets in the third quarter, up 38% from a year earlier, according to its quarterly filing with the SEC. Not all of those accounts qualify, because each crypto account needs approval and whole regions are excluded. For a sense of scale, if clients put just 0.1% of their assets into crypto, that would come to about $13.3 billion. Schwab has disclosed nothing about crypto balances, however, and nothing suggests such money would go to these three tokens.

Five tokens is a short list compared with Coinbase or Robinhood, so Schwab is competing on its existing client relationships, especially with investors who would never open an account at a crypto exchange. Fidelity has offered Solana since late 2025 and E*Trade since July, so SOL access now looks like a basic offering for large US brokers. Schwab does not report crypto balances separately today. The first useful data on demand will probably come with its fourth-quarter results in January, when analysts are likely to ask how many Schwab Crypto accounts are funded.

Schwab’s own roadmap points to token transfers next, which would let clients move coins into their own wallets. A separate crypto service for independent advisers has reportedly been targeted for mid-2027. The two excluded states may take longer. New York requires virtual currency businesses to hold a BitLicense from its financial regulator, and Louisiana runs its own licensing system under its Virtual Currency Business Act. Schwab has not said whether it is seeking approval in either state.