Robinhood brand displayed on a cellphone display and illustration of cryptocurrencies are seen on this illustration picture taken in Krakow, Poland on January 29, 2023. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto by way of Getty Images)
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Online brokerage big Robinhood on Thursday mentioned it is launching a cryptocurrency buying and selling function within the European Union, pushing additional exterior the United States as the corporate appears to be like to unlock progress from worldwide markets.
Robinhood mentioned its new crypto product would enable clients to purchase, promote, and maintain from a variety of greater than 25 tokens, together with bitcoin, ether, ripple, cardano, solana, and polkadot. The firm hopes to supply extra tokens, in addition to the flexibility to switch and “stake,” or earn rewards from, crypto in 2024.
The transfer marks Robinhood’s second main growth exterior of the U.S., after it introduced late final month that it plans to launch inventory trades for U.Okay. clients by early 2024. The firm opened a waitlist within the U.Okay. final week for the service, which is able to provide yields of as much as 5% on buyer deposits.
Robinhood is seeking to tempt EU customers into utilizing its service with the flexibility to earn free bitcoin for customers who commerce tons and refer the app to their buddies. The firm will provide customers as much as one bitcoin, based mostly on a a share of their month-to-month buying and selling quantity and the variety of customers they refer once they enroll.
It comes as a number of main U.S. crypto companies are turning to the European Union for progress after dealing with a tricky time from regulators stateside. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has focused a number of crypto companies, together with Coinbase and Binance, with lawsuits alleging they violated securities legal guidelines.
The EU, in the meantime, has proposed a complete set of regulation, referred to as the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, that may usher in stricter guidelines for crypto buying and selling platforms and issuers of so-called stablecoins — tokens pegged to real-world property just like the U.S. greenback or euro.
Johann Kerbrat, normal supervisor for Robinhood Crypto, mentioned the agency selected the EU as the primary worldwide goal marketplace for its crypto product because of the area’s growth of the world’s first complete set of legal guidelines particularly tailor-made for the crypto business.
“The EU has developed one of the world’s most comprehensive policies for crypto asset regulation, which is why we chose the region to anchor Robinhood Crypto’s international expansion plans,” Kerbrat mentioned in a press release Thursday.
Robinhood additionally touted transparency and security measures in its European crypto providing to persuade customers to commerce with its service. The firm mentioned it might transparently show spreads on trades, together with the rebate the agency receives from promote and commerce orders.
Robinhood mentioned it by no means commingles buyer cash with enterprise funds apart from for working functions, similar to fee of blockchain community charges, and shops all its clients’ cash in chilly wallets disconnected from the web.
Robinhood mentioned it additionally has against the law insurance coverage coverage in place to make sure a portion of property held throughout its storage methods are protected in opposition to losses from theft, together with cybersecurity breaches. The coverage is underwritten by underwriters at Lloyd’s, the insurance coverage market.
Theft of crypto has been a giant downside for the business over the previous couple of years, with main hacks of blockchain networks leading to tens of millions’ price of digital cash being drained from customers’ wallets. Just final month, the HTX change and Heco bridge, two platforms linked to high-profile entrepreneur Justin Sun have been hacked for an estimated $115 million.
The blurring of traces between buying and selling venues and custodians grew to become a giant downside final yr when FTX, the disgraced former $32 billion crypto change, collapsed after revelations that its sister market-making agency Alameda Research used buyer funds to make dangerous bets on sure tokens.
Source: www.cnbc.com”