#Gate广场四月发帖挑战 $12 Trillion Arrives: Charles Schwab Officially Opens Crypto Trading, This Time It's Different!!!
Bitcoin price hovers around $66,580 on April 3, 2026, and the entire crypto market has not yet fully recovered from the volatility since the beginning of the year. But at this moment, a piece of news quietly breaks the market's silence.
Charles Schwab announces the launch of its new crypto account “Schwab Crypto,” initially supporting spot trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum. No detours through ETFs, no third-party platforms—users can directly hold crypto assets within their existing stock brokerage accounts. This company manages over $12 trillion in client assets and has millions of retail investors.
This is not the first, but the largest
Over the past two years, the list of mainstream U.S. financial institutions entering crypto has grown longer: BlackRock pushing Bitcoin ETFs, Fidelity launching custody services, Goldman Sachs rebooting its crypto trading desk.
But Charles Schwab is different.
BlackRock or Fidelity are selling “crypto products” to institutional clients; Schwab is targeting ordinary American retail investors—people who trade stocks, are saving for retirement, or just starting to manage their finances. Previously, these clients had to download Coinb or Robin to buy Bitcoin. Now, they can see it right next to their stocks in their account. This “easy buy” experience could have a significant impact on the crypto market, comparable to ETFs.
📈 Timing and Regulatory Relaxation
CEO Rick Wurster predicted this back in April 2025, partly because—traffic to Schwab’s crypto education pages surged by 400% during that period. Users want to buy, and the company is waiting for regulatory approval. The green light came from a series of relaxations between March and May 2025: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued statements explicitly allowing banks to offer crypto custody and trading services directly, without prior approval, as long as risk controls are met.
Regulatory space was created, and Schwab stepped in.
AI is also racing to enable crypto payments
In the same week, another event stirred different ripples in the crypto circle.
Coinb’s AI payment protocol x402 was officially transferred to the Linux Foundation on April 2, 2026, along with the establishment of the “x402 Foundation” as a neutral governing body.
Co-founders include Cloudflare and Stripe, with backing from 23 organizations, including Google, AWS, Visa, Mastercard, Ant Group, and American Express.
🤖 Core Logic of x402 Protocol
The core logic of the x402 protocol is simple: revive the “402 Payment Required” status code in HTTP, which has been dormant for 30 years, and embed payment directly into the network interaction layer.
AI agents can invoke external APIs and consume computing resources, completing micro-payments instantly without human intervention—supported both on-chain and off-chain. This infrastructure is tailored for AI agents. It targets a still-developing but rapidly growing market: automated economic transactions between machines.
Together, these two developments point in the same direction: the use cases for crypto assets are expanding from “speculative assets” to infrastructure.
The logic of entering the market and the meaning behind the numbers
Some may ask: Why now?
In 2025, the regulatory environment in the U.S. clearly warmed. The relaxations by OCC and FDIC are not isolated cases. The Federal Reserve also withdrew guidelines restricting banks from participating in crypto activities in 2025. The compliance costs for institutional entry have significantly decreased. Meanwhile, the crypto market experienced a correction from late 2025 to early 2026, with Bitcoin retreating from its highs and ETF fund flows slowing down. This timing actually presents an opportunity for long-term institutional players—avoiding chasing high prices and instead positioning at lower levels. Schwab’s client base shapes its strategy: not rushing to trade short-term, but treating crypto as an asset class on the shelf for users to choose.
This patient, strategic approach echoes the logic behind BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF efforts years ago.
💰 Schwab Client Management
Assets: approximately $12 trillion
📊 2025 Bitcoin Spot ETF net inflow: approximately $57 billion (Source: CoinGlass)
🏛 Number of institutions backing x402 protocol: 23, covering traditional payments, tech, and blockchain sectors
In recent years, what the crypto market has lacked most is not technology or narratives, but “trust pathways”—making ordinary people feel that this is something that can be integrated into daily life, not just casino chips.
Schwab’s move isn’t about crypto winning over traditional finance; it’s about breaking down the wall between the two.