Robinhood CEO hints at new upcoming crypto features
The US-based financial technology firm plans to set up crypto wallets soon, according to its CEO
US financial services company Robinhood could potentially add new crypto features, among them, setting up the ability for users to transfer assets into external crypto wallets. This is according to a Saturday webcast event structured around the firm’s plans to offer an initial public offering (IPO). Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev reasserted his affirmation in March when he had acknowledged the need to establish a crypto wallet option and promised users that it would come soon.
During the recent event, Tenev revealed that the company was working safely towards achieving this goal.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to provide our crypto customers with the functionality that they’ve been asking for. We know you want wallets,” he noted.
The app-based company, which is popular for offering brokerage services for retailers, has also seemingly taken the route of ‘democratising finance’ as its mission by reserving a third of the shares on offer for user purchase directly via its app.
Most crypto clients have been less than impressed by the lack of a crypto wallet in the past, prompting them to move to exchanges such as Coinbase that offer users a wallet option. Notwithstanding this, Robinhood has maintained decent growth and recorded a significant increase in its number of users. The crypto trading company recorded as many as 6 million new users in the first two months of the year, adding to the 13 million users the firm had accrued prior to the start of the year.
The webcast event was held as Robinhood gears up to offer an IPO later this week. As per a regulatory filing the company made to the SEC on the IPO, the company plans to sell 55 million shares with the price expected to range between $38 and $42 per share. Robinhood anticipates a net $2.3 billion that will subsequently drive its valuation up to $35 billion.
Founded in 2013, Robinhood is evolving from a mere financial services company in the stock sector into a crypto-oriented firm. The company’s Q1 results showed that crypto made up 17% of all the revenue the company accrued. The California-headquartered company also revealed that Dogecoin had contributed to 34% of its transaction-based revenue, translating to a 6% portion of the overall revenue.
With its burgeoning portfolio, Robinhood has not been far from controversy and regulatory battles. The company was slapped with a $70 million fine by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in June for misleading customers, resulting in significant losses.
