Interactive Brokers added more than 1 million net new customer accounts in 2025, setting a new annual record.
Written by: Mahe, Foresight News
In 2026, Interactive Brokers brought the low cost and professional execution capabilities of traditional brokerage business to the crypto market in just three months.
Interactive Brokers, listed on NASDAQ in 2007, currently has a market capitalization of $113.7 billion. This brokerage platform is known for its low commissions, best execution prices, and advanced trading technology. Through an integrated platform, it provides individual investors, active traders, and institutional clients with diversified trading services in stocks, options, futures, forex, bonds, funds, and other products across more than 170 markets and over 200 countries and regions worldwide.
This traditional US stock market giant has chosen to open up a new battlefield in the cryptocurrency field in 2026.
Interactive Brokers' current CEO, Milan Galik
Interactive Brokers first targeted stablecoins as a deposit channel.
In January, Interactive Brokers launched a 24/7 stablecoin account funding service. Eligible clients can send USDC from their personal crypto wallets to a secure address provided by Zero Hash (supporting Ethereum, Solana, and Base networks). Funds are automatically converted to USD within minutes and credited to the broker's account, available around the clock, including weekends and holidays. Support for Ripple's RLUSD and PayPal's PYUSD will be added in the coming weeks.
Interactive Brokers does not charge deposit fees; only Zero Hash charges low conversion fees on a tiered basis, and customers only need to pay blockchain network fees.
This directly solves the problems of bank operating hours restrictions and cross-border delays associated with traditional wire transfers, allowing global investors to instantly inject dollar-valued capital into their accounts and immediately engage in multi-asset trading.
Secondly, Interactive Brokers is now focusing on BTC/ETH trading and deposits.
In February of this year, Interactive Brokers launched Coinbase Nano Bitcoin and Ethereum futures, enabling 24/7 trading. On March 25, users could directly transfer BTC/ETH and other crypto assets from external wallets to their Interactive Brokers-linked crypto accounts without first selling and liquidating their holdings.
This feature eliminates technical barriers, allowing investors to trade crypto assets on the same platform with lower commissions, achieving unified risk management across stocks, options, futures, and crypto.
In addition, the company has expanded its crypto footprint to the European market.
Interactive Brokers, through its Irish subsidiary, has opened up cryptocurrency trading to qualified individual investors in the European Economic Area. Users can trade 11 major crypto assets, including BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, and DOGE, on the existing platform, alongside stocks, options, futures, forex, bonds, and funds. The service supports 24/7 trading.
Interactive Brokers' current foray into the crypto market is the latest testament to its commitment to "embracing crypto without losing its core identity" as a traditional brokerage.
Back in September 2021, when Bitcoin had just broken through $60,000 and crypto was still considered a high-risk, fringe asset, Interactive Brokers partnered with Paxos Trust Company, regulated in New York State, to be the first to launch spot trading in four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and BCH. Clients didn't need to open a separate crypto account; they could simply apply for permissions within their existing brokerage accounts to trade 24/7 and withdraw funds to external wallets. This "low-cost + unified platform" model was designed from the outset to serve professional investors, rather than chasing retail speculative trends.
In the following years, Interactive Brokers steadily expanded its product line. In 2025, it added Avalanche, Cardano, Chainlink, Dogecoin, Ripple, Solana, and Sui to its product line through Paxos or Zero Hash, supporting more than 11 mainstream assets.
This "steady and solid first, then accelerated integration" approach reflects the unique logic behind traditional brokerages' exploration of crypto. Unlike pure crypto platforms that pursue traffic and leverage, Interactive Brokers views crypto as an integral part of its multi-asset platform: stablecoins are no longer just "digital dollars," but rather efficient settlement channels that can be directly converted into trading funds, margin, or idle capital. The CEO team has repeatedly emphasized that the goal is to "make crypto trading as professional and low-cost as stocks."
Perhaps Interactive Brokers' underlying intentions are not hard to understand. Crypto assets are shifting from an early speculative narrative to becoming an important part of institutional portfolio allocation. Clients increasingly need a unified, professional, and low-cost platform to manage traditional securities, futures and options, and digital assets simultaneously, thereby achieving more efficient risk hedging, liquidity management, and capital allocation. If these services cannot be provided, some high-net-worth and institutional clients are likely to migrate their crypto-related business to pure crypto exchage, leading to decreased overall platform stickiness and fund diversion.
Through innovative initiatives such as 24/7 stablecoin deposits, direct transfers from external wallets, and derivatives, Interactive Brokers has not only significantly reduced the friction costs of cross-border capital flows and asset migration, but also transformed stablecoins into efficient settlement and margin tools, significantly improving the mobility and utilization efficiency of client funds. This strategy precisely aligns with the company's core competencies—advanced automated trading systems, seamless access to over 100 global markets, and extremely low-cost execution.
In 2026, as the crypto market shifts from narrative-driven to institutional allocation, this strategy is proving competitive—clients can monitor the impact of stock volatility on their crypto positions on a single screen, or quickly capture global opportunities with stablecoins without switching between multiple apps.
Interactive Brokers' story is essentially a microcosm of how established Wall Street brokerages are repositioning themselves through technology and execution.
Since its founding in 1978 by Thomas Peterffy, Interactive Brokers has focused on developing automated trading systems. According to its latest publicly available Q4 2025 financial report, Interactive Brokers had 4.4 million client accounts, a 32% increase year-over-year. Net new client accounts exceeded 1 million in 2025, setting a new annual record. Full-year commission revenue was approximately $2.1 billion (+27%), and net revenue was approximately $6.205 billion (+20%), with strong average client returns (approximately 19.2% for individual clients and approximately 28.91% for hedge fund clients).
These impressive figures demonstrate the contribution of "low commissions + global access + one-stop platform" to long-term returns, and also enable Interactive Brokers to gain a foothold at the intersection of TradeFi and Crypto.
