This morning Robinhoods latest addition to their leadership team, Chief Brokerage Officer (CBO) Steve Quirk, was on CNBC discussing various topics facing the company and why he had moved to the company. While a lot of it was talk about the clientele that Robinhood on average deals with, younger newer investors, and the current products that Robinhood offers the topic took a turn that I did not see coming to the future growth of Robinhood. Mr. Quirk initially talked about how the company is looking to roll out retirement products like IRA's but he focused his answer on crypto!
This caught me off-guard for a variety of reasons most of which focus on what has previously been announced by the company. Investors for months have been calling for additional coins to be added to the since currently there are only 7 options for people but the company has been pretty strong in its stance that it was not going to add any additional coins anytime soon. This has irritated some investors and has caused them to leave the platform or at least to not engage with it anymore until they can move their funds off.
Another huge sticking point has been the fact that the crypto you buy is stuck on Robinhood's platform. While they have been developing the ability to transfer crypto both to and from your current holdings that ability is only accessible for a select few as they develop the technology for it. The waiting list for the wallets has surpassed 1 million registered accounts and it sounds like with the rollout plan it won't be until the middle part of this year that the function is available to all.
Probably the biggest thing though that crypto investors and traders hear about and witness ourselves is the lack of clear government regulation. This lack of clarity means that these large companies do not want to run afoul of the law so they are holding pat to protect themselves. CBO Quirk though said that Robinhood's worldwide expansion plans were focused on launching the crypto product first before their stock trading platform and I was pretty shocked by this. He even said that worldwide the regulations are easier to navigate with crypto compared to the markets. This was not something I have ever heard a high-level company executive say about crypto but Steve Quirk said it!
Trying to understand what that means for current Robinhood users is interesting. As others have struggled with regulations worldwide Robinhood feels like they have cracked the code I guess for further expansion. I would also assume that it means that fantastic progress had been made with these wallets so the timeline initially given to users might be sped up. It does not make any sense to me that they would further expand without being able to address one of the biggest complaints ie the wallets. A site, even as credible as Robinhood, I do not think would be successful in saying, "hey buy crypto from me we don't have a lot of offer or a way for you to move it but still do it".
This then leads me to wonder if new coins could be arriving quicker than we expected. Again regulation uncertainty was stated just a few weeks ago by the Chief Financial Officer of Robinhood as to why meme coin Shiba Inu had not been added despite investor demands. When looking at the comments made by the CBO though they really run counter to a lot of what he was saying. It would make sense if the discussion was about what Robinhood was going to offer by the end of the year but it was not it was what was coming how was growth going to pick up to help the stock price now not in 6 months.
These comments definitely caught me off guard this morning and I have looked for any sort of hint about things changing but really have not found anything. If what was discussed does end up happening as quickly as it was implied this would be huge for Robinhood's stock price and accessibility for users now worldwide! Something I would not hold out hope on is Robinhood entering the DeFi space as that space is ripe for fraud and other issues the platform would not want to expose itself to. All of this being said if you do not have a Robinhood account and are interested in combining your crypto and stock trading use my referral code here and when you sign up we both receive a free share of stock plus we move up on the crypto wallet waitlist!
Please know I am not a financial advisor I am just someone who picked up on a trend and wanted to express it! Makes sure you always do your own research and never invest money you cannot afford to lose! If you enjoyed this article and would like to further support me below are a couple of referral links that if you used when signing up I would appreciate it! Also, follow me on Twitter @Cje95_
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