Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says crypto wallet waitlist exceeds 1 million customers

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Robinhood’s recently announced crypto wallet waitlist now has more than one million clients, the company’s CEO said on Thursday, demonstrating the growing importance of cryptocurrencies for the trading application.

“We are very proud of our cryptocurrency platform and giving people more utility with the coins they have,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said at CNBC’s Disruptor 50 summit on Thursday. “We have rolled out our wallet waitlist. Many people have asked for the ability to send and receive cryptocurrencies, transfer them to hardware wallets, transfer them to the platform for consolidation and the waiting list for crypo wallets is now over one million people. “

Last month, Robinhood announced that 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 are some advantages to the technology that make it a bit global and accessible by default and that makes it very interesting.”

Vlad Tenev, co-founder and CEO of Robinhood rings the opening bell on Nasdaq on July 29, 2021.

Source: The Nasdaq

The start-up got its start in cryptocurrency trading three years ago, but has grown in importance to the company’s bottom line. More than half of Robinhood’s transaction-based income in the last quarter came from cryptocurrency trading. That jumped just 3% a year earlier.

The new wallets will allow customers to consolidate their digital coins into one account. Customers 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, surpassing $ 66,900 as investors became more interested in digital assets. JPMorgan said Thursday that he believes the price of bitcoin is rising because investors see it as a better hedge against inflation than gold.

Other investors attributed the record to the Tuesday launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, which tracks bitcoin futures contracts indexed to the future price of the cryptocurrency.

“Crypto is definitely here to stay as an asset class and its ease of use and global nature, I think, has made it attractive to a lot of people,” Tenev added.

Robinhood releases its quarterly results Tuesday after the bell. The company warned investors that trading activity was slowing in the third quarter, which could affect the brokerage’s revenue.

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