Charles Schwab is deepening its push into digital assets, announcing plans to add Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK) to Schwab Crypto in the coming months. The expansion extends the offering beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, letting clients trade a broader set of tokens alongside stocks and other traditional investments in a single account. The company detailed the plan in an official press release.

Timing matters as much as the token list. Schwab is not presenting SOL, AVAX, and LINK as live today; CEO Rick Wurster has targeted year-end 2026 for trading in the three assets. The sequencing is deliberate: Bitcoin and Ethereum trading was only completed for all eligible retail clients in October.

In a post on X on November 9, 2026, the company publicly confirmed the expansion, stating:

As of today, Schwab Crypto™ clients can buy and sell solana (SOL), avalanche (AVAX), and chainlink (LINK), in addition to bitcoin and ethereum. These new tokens are part of Schwab's plans to thoughtfully expand its digital asset offering. Learn more: pic.twitter.com/rtMUPGtBqX

— Charles Schwab Corp (@CharlesSchwab) November 9, 2026

Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum

The initial rollout covered the two largest crypto assets by market capitalization; adding Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink introduces three networks with distinct technical profiles and use cases.

Solana is a high-throughput smart-contract network with a portfolio of consumer applications and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) projects, according to Solana. Avalanche is a highly flexible ecosystem of customizable subnets that has become a favored landing spot for DeFi among institutional investors. Chainlink is an established oracle infrastructure provider that connects smart contracts to real-world data. For this new customer base, a key draw across all three assets is ubiquity.

Solana can be accessed through the Charles Schwab website, mobile app, and thinkorswim platform. That unified experience can be invaluable for regular investors who want to view allocations and handle rebalancing in one place. Schwab has also signaled that it intends to bring many more tokens to the platform over time, implying the three announced here are a starting point rather than the end state.

What Clients Should Know

Charles Schwab will charge 75 basis points, or 0.75%, per crypto trade. That is not cheap, but it is transparent, and it is relatively expensive compared with the spot fees on many crypto-native exchanges, where the maker-taker fee model—under which fees differ depending on whether an order adds liquidity to the market or removes it—often comes in well below that level. The premium is for convenience, custody, integration, and brand trust rather than lowest-cost execution. Schwab has positioned the addition as part of a deliberate, multi-phase build-out of its digital asset platform.

Access is limited as well. Schwab Crypto is not available to customers in New York or Louisiana, a reminder that U.S. crypto access remains fragmented along state lines. Crypto held in Schwab Crypto will not be FDIC-insured or SIPC-protected, an important distinction from cash holdings and securities.

Why Traditional Finance Keeps Moving

Schwab's move fits into a broader institutional trend. U.S. brokerages and banks increasingly treat crypto as a core asset class: Fidelity lets retail clients trade crypto, Robinhood has introduced tokenized stock trading, and Morgan Stanley has been working toward broader crypto access for wealth clients. The cumulative effect is that digital assets are being treated less as an experiment and more as a standing line of business. Competition now centers on depth, cost, and how well each firm integrates crypto with conventional portfolios.

Regulation has shifted, too. The SEC's innovation exemption for tokenized securities, a developing stablecoin bill, and more transparent brokerage guidance have eroded much of the legal hesitancy that kept the biggest brokerages on the sidelines. Schwab's approach of layering Bitcoin and Ethereum first, followed by more mature large-cap alternatives, appears to be a compliance-first strategy focused on assets with deeper systemic liquidity.

That approach comes at a cost. Schwab will not list long-tail tokens too soon, and its fee structure can deter active traders. But for long-term investors seeking to bring crypto in from the cold, the offer is different: crypto positioned as an integrated, alternative component of a diversified portfolio, not a separate high-risk bucket.

Implementation will be critical through the end of 2026. If SOL, AVAX, and LINK prove ready for prime time, attention will turn to which tokens Schwab adds next and whether the firm introduces staking, through which holders of supported tokens can earn rewards for helping operate and secure the underlying networks, or stablecoin transfer capabilities beyond the flow of institutional income from spot-ETF-driven activity. For the industry, the announcement reads as another step toward normalization.