Now residents in 47 U.S. states have access to trading 7 digital assets free of charge on the Robinhood platform.
The Robinhood investment app platform has just announced that its Robinhood Crypto feature has just added more U.S. states to its platform. Previously servicing 39 states, the 8 new additions now mean that Robinhood Crypto is now available to a total of 47 states.
With Robinhood Crypto, users can trade seven digital assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin SV (BSV) Ethereum Classic (ETC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Dogecoin (DOGE) all free of charge. The new state additions include Vermont, Maryland, Nebraska, Minnesota, Delaware, Louisiana, Kentucky and Maine. Apart from its free trading service, Robinhood Crypto also allows users direct access to real-time and live crypto market activity for the aforementioned assets and ten more as well.
Additional news from the announcement reveals that Robinhood now has a new Head of Crypto, Sina Nader. Nader who has significant experience from other major firms including Swiss multinational financial services company Credit Suisse as well as American multinational investment and financial firm, Morgan Stanley, was previously the Director of CryptoLux Capital, an investment firm.
Nader was hired to shape up Robinhood Crypto with his wealth of experiences from the financial sector and per the announcement, the new head is expected to focus on strengthening Robinhood Crypto’s privacy and security, as well as pay direct attention to its custody system. Touching on security, Robinhood boasts that its custody system uses “state-of-the-art cryptographic controls” to ensure security and a fully disconnected cold storage for added protection.
Robinhood launched its commission-free crypto trading feature last year in February, adding digital currency support to its previous offerings. It also announced Robinhood Feed, to support related discussions, news and market activity between investors on the platform.
Back in January, Robinhood successfully received a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to allow operations in New York, and in August, received regulatory approval from the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to begin operations there. This will allow Robinhood International Ltd., a subsidiary, to fully run in the U.K. as a broker.
Commission-less trading in the sector is slowly gaining some popularity especially as services like TradeStation as well as Charles Schwab have both announced free trading to all of their users. Robinhood is, however, one of the market’s first platforms to give its customers this opportunity.
The company’s last valuation rested at $4.7 billion after its last Series E founding round reeled in $323 million. Its last valuation before then in 2018 was about $2 billion less. The company is quite focused on its expansion plans and even though it has been already expanding at an impressive rate, it hopes to do more in the near future. Robinhood has said previously that the funds it’s been able to pull in, is geared towards this expansion, specifically to increase its employee strength, as well as launch new products for its millions of customers.
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