Schwab Crypto Adds Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink

Three More Assets, Same Brokerage Account

Charles Schwab announced on August 27, 2026 that it plans to add Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink to Schwab Crypto in the coming months. None of the three are live yet. The platform currently offers spot Bitcoin and Ethereum, which it began rolling out to clients in May 2026.

• SOL, AVAX and LINK join BTC and ETH on Schwab Crypto, timing given only as the coming months
• 75 basis points per trade, the same 0.75% of dollar value that applies to the existing pairs
• Schwab reports 39.9 million active brokerage accounts, the population this becomes available to
• Joe Vietri, Head of Digital Assets, framed the expansion as giving clients more choice in building a digital asset allocation alongside traditional holdings

Why the Distribution Number Is the Story

The assets themselves are not surprising. SOL, AVAX and LINK are among the most established non-Bitcoin, non-Ethereum tokens by any liquidity or market capitalization measure, and a conservative brokerage extending its shelf was always going to extend it here first.

What is worth attention is where they are being placed. Buying SOL has never been difficult for anyone motivated to open an exchange account. What has been difficult is buying it inside the same login that holds your retirement account, your taxable brokerage positions and your cost basis records. That is a workflow problem rather than an access problem, and it is a large one for the segment of investors who will not maintain a separate venue for a small allocation.

Schwab's May launch was the structural move, and we covered it when Schwab went live with spot Bitcoin and Ethereum for retail at 75 basis points. Adding assets to a platform that already exists is incremental by comparison — but incremental in the direction of a wider shelf inside a mainstream brokerage is exactly how this asset class has been normalizing.

What Does 75 Basis Points Actually Cost?

It is worth being precise, since fee comparisons in this market are frequently made carelessly. Seventy-five basis points is 0.75% of the dollar value of each trade. On a $1,000 purchase that is $7.50, and you pay it again on the way out.

Set against dedicated crypto exchanges, that is not the cheapest execution available and Schwab has not claimed it is. Set against the way most brokerage clients have historically obtained crypto exposure — through funds and trusts carrying their own ongoing expense ratios — a one-off spread on a position you intend to hold compares differently. Which is better depends entirely on trade frequency, and anyone active enough for that to matter is probably not choosing Schwab for execution quality.

Three Assets With Three Different Theses

The selection is more considered than a market-cap sort would produce. Solana is a high-throughput settlement layer, and its technical trajectory has been real — Agave 4.2 pushed slot times down to 350ms on the road to 200ms, and institutions have been building on it, as with Shinhan's won-denominated tokenized fund. Chainlink is oracle infrastructure, the plumbing that connects off-chain data to on-chain contracts, and it turns up in bank-facing work such as Project Pangea's cross-border FX effort. Avalanche is a subnet architecture that institutions have used for permissioned deployments.

Read together, these are infrastructure positions rather than speculative ones, which is a coherent shelf for a brokerage whose clients skew long-horizon. Schwab says it will continue adding assets over time based on client demand and market conditions — the usual caveat, but one that reads as a roadmap given it has now been followed twice. Our crypto coverage will track what lands next.

Sources: Charles Schwab — August 27, 2026; The Block — August 27, 2026.