Brokerage giants now capture crypto retail: Fee war drives market enclosure
Traditional finance entities are asserting quiet dominance in the digital asset market. The Great Enclosure: Why Wall Street’s Spot Pivot Is a Death Knell for Native Exchanges Traditional finance giants are no longer content with selling "paper" crypto to their clients; they are now systematically absorbing the underlying plumbing of the digital asset market. With roughly $11.7 trillion in assets under management, Charles Schwab’s move to launch spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for retail clients marks a definitive shift from passive observation to aggressive market enclosure. By pricing their entry at 75 basis points —and seeing Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade undercut them at 50 basis points —the legacy brokerage world has initiated a fee-compression war that native crypto exchanges are fundamentally ill-equipped to win. ...