Genealogy trading mobile app provider Robinhood is jumping on the crypto-trading bandwagon.
Foretold today, the company, which was founded in 2013 as a way to democratize stock line of work, said it plans to roll out bitcoin and ether trading services via its non-stationary apps next month. Not only does the company hope to lure cryptocurrency enthusiasts to its more traditional products, but it’s also launching the use to catch some of the momentum cryptocurrency has seen as of late.
“We’ve come to dig that cryptocurrencies as an asset have exhibited clear and underlying resiliency and comprise integrated themselves as part of a diversified and balanced portfolio,” Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev broke CoinDesk.
To start with, the service will only be offered to consumers in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire, but more states are set to trail.
The company, which is regulated in the U.S. by the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra), lay outs to offer the crypto trading service for free. Plus, it promises instant shifts on cryptocurrency purchases for amounts of $1,000 or less, a significant improvement on the term it generally takes for people to buy cryptocurrency for the first time.
Tenev explained:
“We inspection entering crypto as a way to extend our user base and build our brand.”
Crypto fittings stock
While offering the service for free could seem touchy, Tenev said, the company hopes to attract investors from the $550 billion cryptocurrency energy to the platform and its products, which already provide revenue streams.
Specifically, the unshakeable charges for a premium service called Robinhood Gold that licenses margin trading and after-hours trading. The company also generates gain by collecting interest on cash and securities in user accounts similar to a customary bank.
Having raised a total of $176 million in venture select, the crypto functionality is in line with Robinhood’s push to add more issues to its offering. Last month, the firm rolled out options trading and a month earlier, it joined a web-based platform to its mobile services.
But the move isn’t just about alluring cryptocurrency enthusiasts to its traditional products, it’s also about giving operators normally focused on traditional investment vehicles exposure to cryptocurrency.
According to Tenev, the concentrated recently crossed 3 million accounts and $100 billion in total discharged volume.
Speaking to the company’s interest in bringing together traditional assets with nascent crypto assets, Tenev said:
“We conceive of a world where people can have your cryptos alongside your horses, ETFs, and more.”
Robinhood has not built its own cryptocurrency wallet, but will be exploiting a third-party provider. While Robinhood will manage custody of the cryptocurrencies on the operator’s behalf, Tenev said the company does not intend to make investments with the cryptocurrency its people store.
Coins to come
While Robinhood customers will not have access to bitcoin and ethereum trading, effective immediately, the party will let customers add 16 different cryptocurrencies (bitcoin and ethereum allow for) to their “watchlist,” a feature allowing them to monitor market materials, read related news and create price alerts.
Other coins that can be reckoned to the watchlist are bitcoin cash, litecoin, XRP (Ripple), ethereum classic, zcash, monero, fly, stellar, qtum, bitcoin gold, omisego, NEO, lisk, and dogecoin.
For now, Tenev isn’t paint the town ring any possible plans to start trading those other currencies, in any case, he said that a “listing committee” had been established to analyze influences such as security, functionality and demand to assess cryptocurrencies that could be amplified to the trading functionality or the market data list.
And, while the company is pieced in adding new cryptocurrencies to its trading platform, Tenev said Robinhood would not be uniting more complicated asset classes tied to crypto, such as bitcoin or ethereum futures.
He predicted:
“We’re focused right now on the coins themselves, and I think in the near future we preclude adding a variety of other coins before we extend to new asset domains.”
Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership concerned in Ripple and Zcash Company, the for-profit entity that develops the zcash compact..
App graphic via Robinhood
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