Charles Schwab enters the game: Wall Street's secret plan for cryptocurrencies

Waking up after a good sleep, BTC tried to rebound to 70k but failed, and has continued to hold near the 68k range. The ten-year pact live tracking plan has reached its 35th month, the 66th note, and the 49th add-on purchase. This add-on purchase price was $68,486. After the trade, the cost basis for the position is $60,535. ROI 9%.

The latest buzz in the community is nothing more than this: Charles Schwab (formerly described as 嘉信理财) is set to list Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading. By the end of Q1, it will be implemented. This isn’t a rumor—it’s a report by Decrypt. Who is Schwab? It’s a brokerage giant managing more than $9 trillion in assets. When it arrives, what does that mean? It means that your neighbor’s retired old guy will soon be able to buy Bitcoin in a single click in his Schwab account, just like buying Apple stock.

Some people say this is bullish, others say it’s bearish. Don’t jump to conclusions yet—we need to see what these smart money players on Wall Street are actually planning.

When it comes to Bitcoin on Wall Street, who is holding it?

First, let’s look at some data. According to a detailed analysis by BeInCrypto, as of the end of March 2026, Wall Street holds more than 1.6 million BTC through ETFs and corporate balance sheets. That number isn’t small. But BeInCrypto reminds us that many holdings aren’t born from long-term conviction; they’re part of an arbitrage strategy—for example, the classic basis trade: buying spot ETFs while shorting CME futures to profit from the price spread.

Who is buying? Who is selling? 13F filings reveal some interesting moves. Millennium added 8,100 BTC, Mubadala from Abu Dhabi added 2,300 BTC, and Morgan Stanley added 1,900 BTC. Dartmouth became the fourth Ivy League school to enter Bitcoin. At the same time, Brevan Howard cut 17,700 BTC, and the Royal Bank of Canada exited completely.

Some are entering, others are leaving. This isn’t FOMO—it’s positioning. Institutions adjust their exposure based on market volatility, not by making decisions on a whim.

But the more critical question isn’t who is buying—it’s who is safeguarding these Bitcoins.

Coinbase is a clear monopoly, custodying over 80% of U.S. Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF assets. This is an admission made directly by CEO Brian Armstrong. Only Fidelity manages its own funds, and VanEck chose Gemini. The other eight are all with Coinbase.

This isn’t decentralization—it’s centralized custody. A single failure, a network attack, or a regulatory storm could simultaneously affect multiple funds. If Satoshi Nakamoto saw this, I don’t know what he would think.

This trend toward centralization runs counter to Bitcoin’s original spirit. But Wall Street doesn’t care about spirit—it only cares about compliance and security. In their view, handing coins to Coinbase is as natural as handing stocks to DTCC. The problem is that DTCC has more than a hundred years of credit behind it, while Coinbase has only a little over a decade of history—and has suffered multiple outages.

Tokenized funds are another path—a way to gain risk exposure without needing to hold Bitcoin.

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, a tokenized U.S. Treasury money market product, manages $2.85 billion in assets. More importantly, BlackRock has already started trading BUIDL on Uniswap, and it also bought UNI governance tokens. This is its first direct touch with DeFi trading infrastructure.

Got it? BlackRock’s approach is: put traditional assets on-chain, and let crypto capital gain risk exposure to traditional assets through tokenized funds. Its IBIT product lets traditional capital in the U.S. stock market conveniently get risk exposure to crypto assets; its BUIDL fund is doing the opposite business. One sugarcane, sweet at both ends.

What’s Wall Street’s ultimate goal? From a deep-dive analysis by CryptoSlate, we can see a clue.

The article points out that in Q1 2026, Wall Street is systematically shrinking DeFi’s claimed role in the future of finance. ICE announced that NYSE is building a tokenized securities platform that runs 24/7, supports instant settlement, and uses stablecoin-backed funds. WisdomTree launched 24/7 trading for tokenized money market funds. The Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC jointly issued a statement that tokenized securities should receive the same capital treatment as non-tokenized versions. The SEC approved Nasdaq’s proposal to trade certain securities in tokenized form.

All these moves point in one direction: traditional finance is taking blockchain technology and fitting it into its familiar regulatory framework. They don’t need DeFi, don’t need Uniswap, and don’t need Compound. They can build their own on-chain trading platforms, issue tokenized assets themselves, and set their own rules.

This makes you think of another well-worn point: Wall Street isn’t here to embrace crypto—it’s here to absorb crypto.

For DeFi, this is indeed a test of trust.

The total amount of on-chain capital is now over $70k, including about $68k in stablecoins, nearly $13 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasuries, and $1 billion in tokenized stocks. Where will this money ultimately go? Will it flow to DeFi protocols that don’t require KYC on the front end but are controlled by a small number of custodians on the back end? Or will it flow to fully compliant tokenized platforms endorsed by banks?

The answer isn’t clear. DeFi has an irreplaceable advantage: composability. You can borrow on Aave, trade on Uniswap, provide liquidity on Curve—these operations can be seamlessly combined without anyone’s permission. Tokenized platforms can’t do that, because they need a centralized gatekeeper to approve downstream connections.

But composability is a double-edged sword. Drift’s $285 million exploit is proof. By controlling the access management layer, the attacker stole a massive amount of funds. Drift’s TVL fell from roughly $550 million to below $250 million. And because Drift’s infrastructure is connected to downstream vaults, yield strategies, and collateral positions, the impact of this attack rippled across the entire Solana DeFi ecosystem.

Chainalysis data shows that private key leaks accounted for 43.8% of the stolen crypto in 2024—the largest attack category. TRM Labs data shows that in 2025, attackers stole $2.87 billion through nearly 150 hacking incidents, with infrastructure attacks targeting key material, wallets, and the access control layer making up the bulk.

The lesson is obvious: risks in the control layer, governance layer, and access management layer are now bigger than the smart contract code itself. And DeFi’s security culture hasn’t caught up with this shift yet.

Schwab entering is both a signal and a catalyst.

The signal is that mainstream financial institutions are finally no longer hesitating and are fully moving into Crypto. From BlackRock to Fidelity, from Schwab to Robinhood, from NYSE to Nasdaq, every corner of Wall Street is laying plans.

The catalyst is that it will accelerate capital flowing from decentralized platforms to compliant platforms. When your Schwab account can directly buy Bitcoin, will you still register with Coinbase, transfer funds, and learn about wallets? When NYSE’s tokenized stocks can be traded 24/7, will you still go on Uniswap to find some unknown protocol that wraps stock tokens?

For individual investors, this is a moment worth thinking about. In the past, we said: don’t custody—be responsible for your own private keys. Now Wall Street says: hand it to us for custody; it’s safer and more convenient. In the past, we said: don’t use intermediaries—use DeFi. Now Wall Street says: we provide the same service, but with more compliance and more reliability.

Which is right? Which is wrong? There’s no absolute right or wrong—only choices and trade-offs.

If you’re a long-termist who believes Bitcoin’s original purpose is decentralization and resistance to censorship, then you should stick with non-custodial wallets, keep running full nodes, and use DEXs. If you’re just a regular investor who wants to profit from Bitcoin’s rise and doesn’t care who custody holds it, you’re very likely to choose products from Schwab, Fidelity, and BlackRock. This is purely a pragmatic consideration, and it seems hard to fault.

These two options can coexist for a long time. Wall Street can’t absorb all of Crypto, and DeFi won’t eliminate traditional finance. The end result may be what CryptoSlate said: DeFi captures a 5% to 10% share of on-chain capital—about $16 billion to $33 billion—becoming a premium layer on top of tokenized infrastructure, while most capital stays within compliant platforms.

Back to the Schwab story. Maybe this is: bullish in the short term, complicated in the long term.

Bullish in the short term because Schwab’s entry will bring a large amount of new capital and push up prices. Complicated in the long term because as more and more trades happen inside compliant platforms, on-chain liquidity will shrink, DeFi’s room to survive will be compressed, and Bitcoin’s original vision will be diluted.

But in any case, this is an irreversible trend. Wall Street is already on the train—and it’s trying to control the steering wheel.

As passengers who got on in the earlier stops, we either choose to keep sitting in the back car, or choose to jump off the train. There’s no third option.