Bitcoin prices hovered 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 broke the market’s silence.

Charles Schwab announced the launch of its new crypto account, “Schwab Crypto,” which initially supports spot trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum. No detours through ETFs, no third-party platforms—users can hold crypto assets directly within their existing stock brokerage accounts. The company manages over $12 trillion in client assets and has millions of retail investors.
This is not the first, but the largest in scale.
Over the past two years, the list of mainstream US financial institutions entering crypto has grown longer: BlackRock launched a Bitcoin ETF, Fidelity introduced custody services, Goldman Sachs rebooted its crypto trading desk.
But Charles Schwab is different.
BlackRock or Fidelity sell “crypto products” to institutional clients; Schwab’s target is 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, with a quick glance at their account, Bitcoin appears right next to their stocks. This “easy buy” experience could have a significant impact on the crypto market, comparable to ETFs.
📈 Timing and Regulatory Relaxation
CEO Rick Wurster had predicted this as early as April 2025, partly because—during that period—the traffic to Schwab’s crypto education pages surged by 400%. 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 provide 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 rushing to do 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, and the “x402 Foundation” was established as a neutral governance 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, which has been dormant in the HTTP protocol for 30 years, and embed payments 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 rapidly growing yet still forming 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 US regulatory environment clearly warmed up. The relaxations by OCC and FDIC were not isolated cases. The Federal Reserve also withdrew guidelines restricting banks from participating in crypto activities in 2025. The compliance costs for institutional entry significantly decreased. Meanwhile, the crypto market experienced a correction from late 2025 to early 2026, with Bitcoin retreating from its highs and ETF fund inflows slowing down. This timing actually presents an opportunity for long-term institutional players—avoiding buying at high prices and accumulating at lower levels.
Schwab’s client base determines 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 is in line with BlackRock’s earlier logic when launching its Bitcoin ETF.
💰 Schwab’s Client Assets
Assets: approximately $12 trillion
📊 2025 Bitcoin Spot ETF net inflow for the year: about $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 believe this is something that can be integrated into daily life, rather than just casino chips.
Schwab’s move signals that crypto has not won over traditional finance, but the wall between them has become slightly thinner.