Charles Schwab has named longtime company manager Joe Vietri its head of digital assets, a new position, making him responsible for the financial services company's overall strategy to build out cryptocurrency capabilities.
That includes offering spot trading once the regulatory environment allows it, conducting cryptocurrency research for clients and client-facing teams and managing Schwab’s point of view on the quickly evolving cryptocurrency ecosystem in partnership with several teams within Schwab, a spokesman said.
Vietri has logged over 30 years at Schwab, most recently as branch network leader, overseeing the firm’s more than 400 branch locations and thousands of client-facing financial consultants. Before that, he led Schwab’s active trader business and was CEO of OptionsXpress, the derivatives trading platform that Schwab acquired in 2011.
Naming Vietri to the post "is an important step in our overall, ongoing process to expand how clients can access these assets at Schwab. As we have said, we are monitoring this space and the regulatory environment closely, and Schwab plans to offer spot cryptocurrency trading after the regulatory environment changes. We anticipate that it will change, and we’re getting ready for that eventuality," the spokesperson said in an email Friday.
In the meantime, clients can get exposure to cryptocurrencies in multiple ways at Schwab, including exchange-traded products that invest in bitcoin or ether, ETFs and mutual funds that invest in crypto futures or the broader cryptocurrency or digital asset ecosystem, individual equities with exposure to the cryptocurrency or broader digital asset ecosystem, among other investment vehicles, Schwab said.
Schwab's move comes as the Trump administration, considered more friendly toward crypto than the Biden administration, gets underway. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced a crypto task force, to be led by a commission known for her dissents to SEC crypto enforcement actions.
Credit: Diego Radzinschi/ALM
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