Charles Schwab is preparing to offer spot crypto trading to registered investment advisors, with an internal target of 2027, according to a report from crypto news account WuBlockchain published on June 2, 2026. The firm custodies roughly $10 trillion in client assets, which makes the move one of the larger commitments yet from a traditional US custodian to put direct crypto buying and selling in front of the advisor channel.
The detail that matters is the audience. This is not a retail trading app feature. Schwab is pointing the rollout at registered investment advisors, the professionals who manage money on behalf of clients and who have so far had limited paths to hold spot crypto inside the same accounts they use for stocks and bonds.
A custody base measured in trillions
Schwab's scale is the story. A firm sitting on about $10 trillion in client assets does not add a product line casually, and advisors who clear through Schwab represent a distribution network that crypto-native platforms have spent years trying to reach. Putting spot Bitcoin and other assets alongside equities in advisor-managed accounts removes a workflow gap that has kept many wealth managers in spot ETFs or structured products rather than the underlying coins.
The 2027 target also signals how these decisions move at an institution of this size. Compliance review, custody arrangements, and account integration take time, and a stated launch year is closer to a committed roadmap than to the "exploring" language that larger banks have often used. It is worth treating the date as a target rather than a guarantee, since regulatory and operational conditions can shift before then.
The advisor channel was a holdout
Most of the headline US crypto adoption over the past two years has happened at two ends of the market. Retail users got direct access through exchanges and through the spot Bitcoin ETFs that launched in early 2024. Large institutions got custody and prime brokerage from specialist firms. The registered investment advisor in the middle, managing portfolios for households and smaller institutions, often had to route crypto exposure through ETFs because direct spot trading was not available inside the custody platforms they already used.
Schwab closing that gap would let advisors treat crypto more like any other line item in a managed account. That has knock-on effects for how clients of those advisors end up holding their coins. Assets bought through an advisor at a custodian like Schwab sit with a regulated third party, which is the opposite design from holding crypto in your own wallet. Both models have trade-offs. Custodial access is simpler and fits existing tax and reporting workflows, but it carries counterparty exposure: if a custodian fails, client balances can be frozen during recovery. Self-custody removes that single point of failure and shifts key management onto the holder.
Part of a wider US adoption run
The timing fits a broader pattern of regulated crypto access expanding across the US financial system. Over the past month, the SEC approved Paxos as the first blockchain-native clearing agency, United Texas Bank secured an OCC national charter with direct Federal Reserve access, and Coinbase moved further into regulated derivatives. Schwab's advisor push extends that trend into wealth management specifically, a segment that controls a large share of US household investable assets.
The market backdrop is less buoyant than the adoption news. As of June 2, 2026, Bitcoin traded around $70,759, down 3.4% over 24 hours and 7.7% on the week, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index reading 31, in Fear territory. A 2027 launch sits well clear of current price action, so the announcement reads as a structural bet rather than a response to the present tape.
For readers comparing how to hold and spend crypto, the contrast is useful. Advisor custody at a firm like Schwab is built for portfolio allocation and long-term holding, not for daily payments. Direct spending still runs through crypto cards and exchange-linked products such as the Coinbase ecosystem in the United States, which connect a balance to point-of-sale rails. The two serve different jobs.
Overview
Charles Schwab, custodian of roughly $10 trillion in client assets, is targeting a 2027 launch of spot crypto trading aimed at registered investment advisors, per a June 2, 2026 report. The advisor channel has been a notable holdout for direct spot access, and Schwab's scale makes the commitment a meaningful adoption signal. The date is a target, not a confirmed launch, and it lands during a risk-off week for crypto prices.
