safety · 5 min read

Who Actually Holds Your Crypto

Your shares and your Bitcoin appear on the same screen, in the same account, under the same brand. At every broker we checked that offers both, they are held by two different companies — and the second one is not the broker-dealer whose name is on the app.

Written by: Juan Manuel Gonzalez
Published: August 31, 2026

This is not a warning about crypto prices. It is about a structural fact that is disclosed in the small print of every schedule we read, stated by none of them prominently, and reported by no comparison site we are aware of: when a US broker offers crypto alongside securities, the crypto is almost always executed and custodied by a separate firm.

What we found

Reading each firm’s own published fee schedule, six of the brokers in our database price crypto trading, and every one of them names a third party doing the work.

Broker	Who executes and custodies the crypto	Published cost
Interactive Brokers	Paxos Trust Company or Zero Hash	0.12%–0.18% of trade value, $1.75 minimum
E*TRADE	Zero Hash, which charges the fee and shares a portion with E*TRADE	0.50% of the trade value
Public	Zero Hash	1.25% of the order amount
tastytrade	Zero Hash Liquidity Services for trading, Zero Hash LLC for custody	1% per purchase, 0.75% for Bitcoin and Ether
Webull	Webull Pay or Bakkt, depending on the state	1.00% spread per trade
eToro	eToro USA LLC or eToro NY LLC, not eToro USA Securities Inc.	1% to buy or sell

The pattern inside the pattern is the concentration. Zero Hash appears at four of the six — named outright at three and as one of two options at Interactive Brokers. A reader who deliberately spread their crypto across several brokers to spread the counterparty risk may not have spread it at all.

Why the distinction is not pedantic

SIPC protects the custody function of a broker-dealer. It is the broker-dealer’s failure it responds to, and SIPC states plainly that its protection does not extend to digital assets that are unregistered investment contracts, nor to stablecoins, currencies or commodities. When the company holding the asset is not the broker-dealer, the question is not merely whether crypto is a covered security — it is whether the firm that would have to fail is the one SIPC is looking at.

Interactive Brokers puts the same point in its own words in its UK disclosure, where it states flatly that cryptoassets are unregulated. The wrapper differs by jurisdiction; the structure does not.

What this does not mean

It does not mean these firms are doing anything improper. Every arrangement above is disclosed in the firm’s own schedule
It does not mean the custodians are unregulated. Zero Hash LLC publishes an NMLS number, and eToro’s crypto entities publish New York money transmitter and virtual currency licence numbers
It does not mean your shares are affected. The securities in the same account sit with the broker-dealer and are covered on the ordinary terms

What to check before you buy crypto at a broker

Find the sentence naming the crypto entity. It is in the fee schedule or the footer, not the pricing headline
Check whether that entity is the same one named as your broker-dealer. At every firm above, it is not
Read what the broker says about protection for the crypto specifically, rather than what it says about the account
If you hold crypto at more than one broker, check whether they share a custodian before assuming the risk is spread

None of this is hidden. It is simply never the headline, and it is the kind of fact that only becomes visible when you read six schedules next to each other.