The waitlist for Robinhood‘s recently announced crypto wallet now has more than one million customers, the company’s CEO said Thursday, demonstrating cryptocurrencies’ increasing importance to the trading app.
“We’re very proud of our cryptocurrency platform and giving people more utility with the coins they have,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said during CNBC’s Disruptor 50 summit on Thursday. “We rolled out our wallets waitlist. A lot of people have been asking for the ability to send and receive cryptocurrencies, transfer them to hardware wallets, transfer them onto the platform to consolidate and the crypo wallets waitlist is well over a million people now.”
Last month, Robinhood announced it was testing a crypto wallet feature. The wallet will allow investors to trade, send and receive digital currencies, as well as move them in and out of the Robinhood app. Robinhood currently offers seven digital coins, including bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin.
“You can have a wallet, you can send people cryptocurrencies from that wallet to their wallet,” Tenev said. “There’s certain advantages that are in the technology that make it kind of global and accessible by default and that makes it very interesting.”
Vlad Tenev, co-founder and CEO of Robinhood rings the opening bell at the Nasdaq on July 29th, 2021.
Source: The Nasdaq
The start-up debuted cryptocurrency trading three years ago, but it has become more important to the company’s top line. More than half of Robinhood’s transaction-based revenue last quarter came from cryptocurrency trading. That jumped from just 3% a year earlier.
The new wallets will let clients consolidate their digital coins into one account. Clients can then trade, send and receive cryptocurrencies to and from other wallet addresses. Rivals Coinbase and Gemini already offer this feature.
Bitcoin hit an all-time high on Wednesday, topping $66,900 as investors become more interested in digital assets. JPMorgan said Thursday it believes bitcoin’s price is rising because investors see it as a better hedge for inflation than gold.
Other investors attributed the record high to the Tuesday launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, which tracks bitcoin futures contracts pegged to the future price of the cryptocurrency.
“Crypto is certainly here to stay as an asset class and the ease of use and the global nature of it, I think, has made it attractive to lots of people,” Tenev added.
Robinhood reports quarterly results on Tuesday after the bell. The company warned investors that trading activity was slowing in the third quarter, which could hit the brokerage’s top line.
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