... or forlorn coins aka digital assets all in one

Cash is trash, I'm talking equities here. Money fund would still count towards 500k limit all the same.

AFAIA SIPC, or any other comparable protection, is irrelevant when it comes to securities you own, it only protects the cash in your account. It's your (limited) credit risk insurance against your bank/broker.

I may be wrong, but this is how I understand them.

SIPC insures securities up to $500k and cash up to $250k.

Interesting, didn't know that.

However, it looks like your plan won't work. From the SIPC rules:
Also, the examples by SIPC say that two (ordinary) individual brokerage accounts in the same name count as one.
"(Ordinary)" because Roth, IRA, and other types of accounts count separately, as if they were owned by a different person.

Well, the assumption is if I split stocks between several independent brokerages, it is unlikely that two of them would try to defraud me at the same time. So it's kinda still $500k/brokerage from this PoV.

It's unlikely that any large broker will try to defraud you.

Exactly. P(both are trying to defraud me) = P(unlikely)^2, negligible compared to any single one's P(unlikely) which is maybe not so negligible

When did something like this last happen (the last two or three times), and what was the outcome?

MF Global in 2011

Customers were made whole in the end but were taken for a 5 year ride: https://www.sipc.org/about-sipc/history - 2016 - "The Trustee for the MF Global Inc. liquidation closes the case with a 100% distribution to customers and commodities claimants"

Hardly a normal broker, a commodities broker making bets on it's own account so somewhat different to say Schwab or IB.

But IB is also a commodities broker (at least in UK) and is known to dabble in market making for its own account in its Timber Hill subsidiary

What's the difference to MF Global here, besides Peterffy's impeccable reputation?

If it's a subsidiary, then no risk to IB.

I currently have my biggest portfolio with Trading212 but due to them introducing forex fees I wanted to open up an account with a broker that allows for a multi-currency setup so I also don't always have to convert back to CHF. In the end IB seemed to be the best option, any recent red flags or other recommendations I should be looking at? (checked DEGIRO, Schwab)

Many thanks!

Interactive Brokers just got better!

Was nice to see that today, it will be good for a lot of people starting out.

So what happened, I have an account & have not bothered to execute a trade, originally it was limited to 25k deposits for me as an EU resident, my trades are usually bigger than that.

As a Swiss resident I did not experience such limitations with respect to deposit amount.

They have now eliminated the minimum 10 USD account fee per month if you hold less than 100k USD equivalent in assets. The upshot is a marginal benefit for those on their way to accumulating 100k USD. However, even with the fee, they were still the broker of choice by my reckoning for a variety of reasons.

I just sold a property on Saturday, funds hit my account on Monday & none has got as far as IB due to complications of actually doing what I want to do.

So far we have had rather annoying experience with Interactive brokers. They keep coming back to ask for source of income, ask for salary statements, proof of money sent that was indeed from our account, etc. When placing a larger order for cash transfer they send us a message to call them. Then it takes an hour until they answer.

Way too much time consuming and not worth the hassle for us.

Was wondering if someone had better experiences with Swissquote or some other place you'd recommend? (don't want to pay UBS fees or similar, would rather not have an account )

We trade rarely so maybe not most interesting customers for brokers...