Wall Street Is Opening the Altcoin Floodgates — Will Investors Follow?

Wall Street brokerages are expanding direct altcoin trading, but ETF flows show demand remains concentrated in Solana and XRP.

Wall Street’s retail brokerages are putting

in front of millions more investors. Whether those investors buy is the real question.

Brokerages including Charles Schwab, E*TRADE, and Interactive Brokers—collectively covering 54 million user accounts—are bringing tokens such as Solana (

),

, Avalanche (

), and Chainlink (

) onto the platforms clients already use to trade stocks and funds. The expansion has the potential to dramatically broaden the crypto market’s buyer base.

Schwab is the latest to join the fray. The firm

on Aug. 27 that clients will be able to trade SOL, AVAX, and LINK “in the coming months,” adding to its existing Bitcoin (

) and Ethereum (

) offerings.

Schwab is the latest large retail brokerage to offer altcoin trading. Source: Schwab 

And Schwab is in good company. E*TRADE

direct trading in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana in July, while

Interactive Brokers has

offering 20 cryptocurrencies, including XRP, Cardano (

), Dogecoin (

), Avalanche, and Chainlink.

“Major brokerage access for SOL, AVAX and LINK is a meaningful step,” crypto analyst Scott Melker