CEO of Financial Services Giant Charles Schwab Calls Cryptocurrencies ‘Hard to Ignore’

“We would welcome the chance if the opportunity presents itself from a regulatory standpoint,” said Charles Schwab’s CEO on Wednesday

article-image

Charles Schwab headquarters, San Francisco. Credit: Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • Charles Schwab’s CEO said crypto is “hard to ignore” and would welcome the opportunity to trade the asset if the “opportunity presents itself from a regulatory standpoint”
  • The CEO also said there was a “tremendous void” in the crypto space for a firm like Schwab to fill

In another sign of growing institutional interest in crypto, the CEO of financial services behemoth Charles Schwab gave a rare insight into how his firm is thinking about the nascent asset class.

During an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Walt Bettinger said cryptocurrencies are “hard to ignore” and that in today’s world they are “fairly significant.”

“We have a lot of ways that clients today can invest in crypto. What we don’t offer is direct trading. We would welcome the chance if the opportunity presents itself from a regulatory standpoint,” said Bettinger amid a raft of questions ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic to remote working.

Regulation in the US has made significant headway in recent years. Yet a patchwork of regulatory measures and guidance still looms, giving pause to some of the world’s largest financial firms to enter into the space. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden looks poised to increase oversight on Wall Street and crypto activity in what could create a clearer runway for the bigger players.

Charles Schwab is one of the world’s largest financial services firms with assets under management of over $7.5 trillion and revenue of around $11.69 billion, according to a recent Q3, 2020 quarterly report. Its services range from banking and investing as well as wealth management advisory.

“There’s a tremendous void in that space today for a firm like Schwab,” said Bettinger before pointing out that crypto’s transaction costs in trading were “exceptionally high” as well as its spreads.

A spread refers to the difference between the bid price and asking prices of a security or asset.

Bettinger’s comments echo sentiments already acted upon by the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock, which leaped at the opportunity last year to take a stake in two bitcoin miners, Marathon Digital Holdings and Riot Blockchain.

The move follows one by another large financial services firm, Fidelity Investments, which took stakes in the two miners.

BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink said, in October, “huge opportunities” existed in crypto and bitcoin is “going to help consumers worldwide,” although he fell short of predicting where the asset class would sit in the long term.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley tells Blockworks that it tapped a third party to provide the reports

article-image

If pump.fun is a success, NYSE may have to return to a six-day workweek

article-image

One wallet bought pump.fun’s token from 500 different addresses

article-image

Asset allocator says fee compression could be a challenge as Grayscale converts more crypto funds to ETFs

article-image

The Stripe-acquired firm has big plans for a streamlined, multi-wallet future

article-image

Both founders of the former crypto lender have now landed in new crypto industry roles