(Kitco News) – The announcement that another major financial services firm is deepening its engagement with the crypto space is helping to fan the flames of Bitcoin’s (BTC) rally to $100,000 as Charles Schwab is laying the groundwork to offer spot crypto trading, according to its new CEO.
Rick Wurster, the incoming chief executive of Charles Schwab, recently sat down for an interview with Bloomberg Radio and announced that the banking and investment giant plans to offer spot crypto trading once regulations in the United States make it easier.
“We will get into spot crypto when the regulatory environment changes, and we do anticipate that it will change, and we’re getting ready for that eventuality,” Wurster said.
He reiterated that position during an interview with Yahoo Finance, saying, “We’d also like to directly offer crypto ... We’ve been waiting for a change in the regulatory environment in order to do that, and we’re confident that we think that will come in short order.”
The push to offer retail investors access to spot crypto trading comes as the fortunes of digital asset products rise following the re-election of Donald Trump and the ensuing ‘Trump Trade,’ which saw the prices of stocks and crypto soar.
With companies like Robinhood and Webull already launching product offerings for retail crypto investors, Charles Schwab is now looking to keep pace so they don’t miss out on the revenue opportunities available in the current bullish crypto market.
Schwab currently offers their clients access to crypto-linked exchange-traded funds and crypto futures, but that is only a small subset of the broader crypto market and doesn’t include some of the most popular tokens in the altcoin sector.
“Crypto has certainly caught many’s attention, and they’ve made a lot of money doing it,” Wurster said. “I have not bought crypto, and now I feel silly.”
While Wurster said that he’s not personally planning on investing in crypto for the time being, he supports Schwab clients who wish to do so.
The change in game plan comes as Wurster is set to take over for outgoing CEO Walt Bettinger, who will exit at the end of 2024. Bettinger, who turns 65 next year, has been at the helm of Schwab since 2008, while Wurster has worked at the firm since 2016 and has served as president since 2021.
Along with crypto, another popular investment sector that Wurster is bullish on is artificial intelligence, which he believes will have a significant impact on the wealth-management business.
“It used to be that 60,000 times a month, we would have a phone rep spend more than three minutes searching for a piece of information to answer a client question,” he told Bloomberg. “Now we have built an AI capability that finds that information in seconds.”
