How to Buy Crypto with Charles Schwab
Author: Marco Vela - Fact-checked ✓
Summary: While Charles Schwab doesn’t offer crypto trading on its own platform, you can easily use your account to buy crypto using a third-party cryptocurrency trading platform.
There are plenty of crypto exchanges to choose from, we recommend using eToro as the exchange to work with.
They have most of the popular cryptocurrencies available, are easy to work with, and have fantastic support!
Buy Crypto with eToro
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As mentioned above, just like most banks, Charles Schwab doesn’t offer cryptocurrency trading directly, as setting up a crypto exchange is quite complex and comes with regulations and extra requirements for the banks.
Luckily for us, there are plenty of crypto trading platforms to choose from that you can use to buy bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency you might want.
You can sign up for an exchange (we will use eToro as our example because it is a trusted and worldwide exchange) and transfer funds to the exchange to trade crypto.
Table of Contents
How to buy crypto or bitcoin with Charles Schwab
There are only 4 steps involved, let’s get started!
1. Choose a crypto trading platform
As mentioned above, we’ll be using eToro for this guide as they are a widely used exchange and have over 50 cryptocurrencies to choose from. They also have a few really neat features like “Copy Trading”, which enables users to copy the trades of popular investors on the platform.
Let’s get started!
2. Sign up with the trading platform
The first thing to do is to sign up with the platform.
Once you’ve completed the initial sign-up process, you’ll have to go through a quick verification process (also known as KYC).
3. Funding your account
Next up is funding your account. When it comes to depositing money to your eToro account, you have the option to use a bank transfer, PayPal, credit/debit card, and more.
4. Buy crypto
Finally, just go to the eToro Markets section, find the cryptocurrency you would like, and buy it.
And that’s it, it’s all pretty straightforward, now you know how to buy bitcoin or most other cryptocurrencies with Charles Schwab.
About Charles Schwab
Charles Schwab remains one of the most trusted online brokerage sites. It has been a leader in the industry's transition to commission-free stock and ETF trading. The company also completed two major acquisitions last year. TD Ameritrade was the most notable. Schwab has added 15.8 million customers over the past year. It isn't a niche player in this industry. Schwab serves all levels of investors, from beginners to highly sophisticated.
Schwab offers a wide range of platforms to suit the needs of customers. Schwab's brokerage platforms offer a browser-based platform that integrates with schwab.com. It also offers a highly customizable and sophisticated workstation and mobile options. Customers trading options only or actively trading on margin may have better options elsewhere.
Charles Schwab, a full-service broker, has more than $6.6 trillion of client assets. Schwab customers will soon be able to access TD Ameritrade's Thinkorswim trading platform due to the company's acquisition. The TD Ameritrade trading platform, which is geared towards traders, will join Schwab's StreetSmart online trading platform. This platform already caters to less-intensive investors. Schwab's wide selection of financial products is sufficient for the average investor. However, it may not be the best option for active options traders who need trading access to futures, forex, or cryptocurrency markets.
Charles Schwab is like all online brokers. It struggles to include all of the features and platforms it offers for different investors. Site navigation across Schwab's many platforms is intuitive. The account setup process takes only ten minutes online. These platforms include:
Good news is that it is easier to view the platforms than actually use them. Schwab makes it easy for customers to view all their assets on its website, even those outside Schwab's platform.
All it takes to check balances, verify positions and obtain position-specific research is a click away. You can choose one of your portfolio holdings and enter a symbol to get current information about that security. Other information includes charts, ratings, earnings reports, peers, ratios dividends, financial statements, charts, ratings, charts and other data. All information is available in an intuitive manner across platforms. The website has calendars that show earnings and economic releases. These calendars include actuals and expectations. Edge workstation links to the web page. This level of information is not available on the mobile platform, but that's to be expected given its monitoring and position entry focus.
All platforms offer real-time data streams. Both Edge and the website offer drawing tools for charts. However, the web version of Edge is less comprehensive than the downloadable one. You can trade from an Edge chart by clicking the Trade button at the bottom of the chart. This launches an order entry window. Charts on mobile are not able to draw. Multiple orders can be placed on Edge and the website, but not via the mobile app.
StreetSmart Edge has many customization options. These include what information you want to see in your top account balances, how you would like it to save certain stock searches or ETF searches, as well as customized order tickets. The website allows you to save preferences and stock/ETF/mutual funds screens. StreetSmart Edge is unique in that it shows probability graphs and profit for options strategies. StreetSmart Edge and mobile platforms allow traders to trade four-leg options strategies like condors and butterflies. They offer dropdowns that let users choose which strategy will create an order ticket to match their chosen strategy (vertical or calendar, ratio spreads and butterfly/condor). ).
Options trading is limited to spread positions with two legs and basic options. StreetSmart Edge is the only platform that allows for conditional and contingent orders. The website and mobile would not allow entering a limit order with a contingency that, upon execution of the limit order, a one-cancels-the-other (OCO) order is created to add both a stop loss and profit taking order against the new position.
Charles Schwab is a long-standing online broker. The recent acquisition of TD Ameritrade has further strengthened this position. Schwab's size and economic scale allow it to offer a broad range of services, education and support to its clients, including equities and fixed income. Schwab offers streaming quotes and free trading for stocks and ETFs. It also has web, desktop and mobile apps that are intuitive and run smoothly. Schwab's website navigation is quite good considering the amount of content and size. The menus have a lot to choose from, but are organized by categories and intuitive.
Schwab's wide range of services, low fees for equity and ETF trading and complete suite of services make it a great choice for most investors and traders. However, Schwab might not be the best option for smaller groups of investors/traders. High volume traders due to the $0.65 commission per trade, futures traders due to the need for a separate platform and traders trading on margin as lower rates are available elsewhere. Also, people who want to trade currencies and cryptocurrencies that are not available at Schwab.
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author Marco Vela
A crypto obssessed digital marketer passionate about making a difference in the world. When he's not behind the computer he can be found hiking, camping and relaxing with his dog.