SoFi Crypto Review 2027: Fees, Coins and Regulation

The company, formally SoFi Technologies, is listed on Nasdaq and led by Anthony Noto, a former Twitter and Goldman Sachs executive. It bought a small California bank in 2022 and with it obtained a national bank charter supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

That charter lets it hold deposits and lend from them, which transformed its economics. It also placed the firm under bank-level regulation, and at the time regulators did not allow a bank holding company to run a retail crypto business freely.

In late 2023 the firm closed its original crypto service and gave customers the choice of moving their coins to another provider or selling. Two years later, after federal banking regulators clarified that national banks may provide crypto custody and trading, the service was rebuilt and reopened inside the banking app.

The history is worth knowing. What a regulated bank may offer in crypto depends on the policy of its supervisors, and that policy has changed before.

About 30 coins were available at the relaunch, including bitcoin, ether and solana together with a range of other large assets.

The coins are real and are bought in full. There is no margin, no lending of your coins and no derivative layer.

The feature the bank emphasises is the link to its checking and savings accounts. You can buy crypto straight from an insured bank balance without first transferring money to a separate exchange and waiting for it to clear. Money from a sale goes back to the bank account at once and starts earning interest again.

For people who already use the bank for their salary and bills, that removes almost all the friction from a small purchase.

A member moves $100 from each fortnightly pay cheque into bitcoin, which comes to $2,600 a year. At 1% the yearly cost of buying is $26. That is a modest price for a fully automatic habit. A member who traded the same $2,600 in and out every week would pay about $2,700 a year in fees, more than the balance itself. The product is designed for the first kind of customer.

When the service reopened, coins could not be sent to an external wallet. Deposits of selected coins from outside wallets were added during 2026, and for months the lack of withdrawals drew criticism from users.

The bank's help pages now describe sending crypto to external wallets and exchanges, with a daily limit of $10,000 in value and a hold on coins bought with deposits that have not yet cleared. Check in the app that sending is enabled for your account and for the specific coin, since not every asset supports transfers in both directions.

This point is often misunderstood. Cash in a SoFi checking or savings account is insured by the FDIC up to the usual limits. Crypto is not. A coin's value is not insured against a fall in price, and coins are not deposits.

What the charter does bring is supervision. A national bank is examined by federal regulators, must hold capital against its risks and is subject to strict rules on how customer assets are safeguarded. For a customer comparing it with a lightly regulated app, that is a real difference in oversight, even though it is not insurance.

The service is for US residents and was rolled out in stages, so not every member in every state had access on the first day. Customers outside the United States cannot use it.

Crypto sits in the Invest tab of the same app that holds your bank accounts, loans, credit card and share portfolio. The crypto screens are plain: a chart, a few statistics, buy and sell.

There are no advanced order types, no order book and no technical indicators beyond the basics. Recurring purchases are supported.

The appeal is consolidation. A member can see salary, savings, a mortgage, a retirement account and a bitcoin position on one screen, and the firm rewards members who use several products with better rates. If you like that all-in-one approach, crypto here is a natural extension. If you prefer best-in-class tools for each job, it is not.

The company said it intended to issue a US dollar stablecoin and to use blockchain rails for international money transfers. A SoFi dollar token now appears among the assets supported on the crypto platform. This indicates that crypto is meant to be part of the bank's infrastructure, not just a trading feature. Treat further announced plans as intentions until the products are live.

Sales of crypto are reported on a year-end tax form, alongside separate documents for bank interest and securities. Recurring small purchases create many tax lots, so the consolidated form is useful.

Phone and chat support are available seven days a week, with longer hours on weekdays. As a bank, the firm also has formal complaint procedures and regulatory escalation routes that pure crypto platforms lack.

The investing platform also offers spot bitcoin and ether exchange-traded funds with no commission. A fund has a small annual expense ratio but avoids the 1% trading fee and can be held in a retirement account. For larger sums, compare the two routes before buying coins directly.

Fidelity also charges about 1% and lists far fewer coins, and offers crypto IRAs. Robinhood lists more coins, supports wallets and staking and has a lower-cost route for active users. SoFi's distinctive claim is being a national bank where coins are bought from an insured checking balance.

It suits you if you:

• Already bank with SoFi and want a small, simple crypto holding.
• Like automatic purchases funded from your pay.
• Put weight on federal bank supervision.

It does not suit active traders, people who want to hold their own keys, or anyone outside the United States.