According to CEO Vlad Tenev, there are more than 1 million people waiting on the long-awaited Robinhood crypto wallet.
Speaking to Jim Kramer at the CNBC Disruptor 50 conference on October 21, Teneff said he was very “proud” of Robinhood’s progress in the crypto space, highlighting the company’s recent attempts to provide users with a crypto wallet:
“Many people have asked us to provide the ability to send and receive cryptocurrencies, move them to hardware wallets, and move them to a consolidation platform. As you know, the queue for crypto wallets now has more than a million people, which is very interesting.”
“We see an opportunity to further develop this work,” he added.
Robinhood users have long encouraged the company to develop a cryptocurrency wallet because the platform currently does not support deposits and withdrawals and only allows users to purchase cryptocurrencies with only US dollars and trade digital assets on the platform.
On September 22, Robinhood finally announced its plans to launch a digital asset wallet and opened a waiting list for first access to the new feature. A Robinhood spokesperson told Market Watch last month that the wallet will debut this month for some users and will eventually open to all users in early 2022.
During the event, Tenev highlighted the importance of the emerging crypto sector, stating that it is “here to be like an asset class” and has specific benefits such as the ability to connect to the global market.
“So you know, no matter where you are in the world, whether in the US or abroad, you can have a wallet, you can send cryptocurrency to people from that wallet into their wallet,” he said.
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Robinhood first launched trading in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in 2018 for clients in five US states. Since then, Robinhood has expanded altcoin support to assets such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Litecoin (LTC) and currently allows traders based in all but four US states to access their crypto trading services for free.
When Theven was asked if Robinhood would expand its support for Shiba Inu (SHIB), the CEO initially suggested that was unlikely, when he referred to the company’s stringent listing policy.
“We currently only offer seven coins. And I think you need to go back to security first, right? So, we won’t usually be the first to add new objects. We want to make sure they meet a strict set of criteria.”
Speaking about the company’s vision, Tenev argued that Robinhood offered more opportunities for economic inclusion than its competitors, arguing that its commission-free trading structure was “unindustrial.”
“I think if you look at cryptocurrencies, for example, people are still paying 3% and 4% commissions to get into this market. You see a lot of opportunities to serve more clients who have less money, and it’s worse than that,” he says. We have it now.
