Robinhood Crypto Lets Anyone Buy Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies
What is Robinhood Crypto?
Robinhood Crypto will let you buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum without any transaction fees. The free transaction feature has traditionally made the Robinhood App popular among millennials. While the Robinhood already allows anyone to buy and sell stocks, Robinhood Crypto will allow anyone to get in on cryptocurrency social phenomenon!
While the app will initially allow you only to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum, it will allow you to monitor 14 other cryptocurrencies. These are Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum Classic, Zcash, Monero, Dash, Stellar, Qtum, Bitcoin Gold, OmiseGo, Neo, Lisk, and Dogecoin. Hopefully, eventually, you’ll be allowed to trade these in the future.
While the Robinhood App only lets you trade stocks during market hours. Robinhood Crypto will be available 24/7. You can tell this by their 80’s Tron graphic design styling on their Learn More Page.
Robinhood Crypto Will Be Available In February
Currently, all the company says about the release date is February 2018. They currently have a wait list for users and as of Monday night, January 2018, it has exceeded over 1 million users on the waitlist for Robinhood Crypto (join the waitlist here).
We expect Robinhood Crypto to be released in waves throughout February.
Only certain states will get it starting off, the new feature first be available in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire and Montana in the beginning. They haven’t released the following states.
What Does This Mean For Cryptocurrencies?
Robinhood is one of the first stock trading platforms to break into cryptocurrency trading scene. This gives some legitimacy to cryptocurrencies as they have often been seen as a joke. The Robinhood App will be a multipurpose marketplace for people to buy both stocks and cryptocurrencies. This isn’t something any other traditional stock brokers are is doing right now.
Currently, the biggest marketplace where you can buy and sell cryptocurrency is Coinbase. Coinbase only deals with cryptocurrency (no stocks like Robinhood) and charges a 1.5% – 4% transaction fee. This in addition to the negative media attention Coinbase has received for crashing during peak hours, lends itself as an easy target for Robinhood Crypto which has shown reliability, oh and it’s free.
It’s anticipated that the legitimacy the Robinhood App brings to cryptocurrency, free trading and it’s current millennial market. Robinhood Crypto will introduce many more people to an easy way to buy and sell bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The waitlist alone for Robinhood Crypto is over 1 million people or 1/3 of the current Robinhood App’s user base. That’s 1 million people jumping into cryptocurrencies.
Why Is The Robinhood App Doing This?
Well, Robinhood isn’t doing this for the money. Co-Founder of Robinhood, Baiju Bhatt expects “We are going to break-even on this” he followed “But it could dramatically increase our user growth”. Considering the Robinhood App has 3 million users, and the waitlist for Robinhood Crypto is already over 1 million. That’s pretty good user growth (plus lots of media attention as a legitimate place to buy Bitcoin). Here’s how Robinhood actually makes money since they don’t charge fees.
How To Buy And Sell Cryptocurrency?
Robinhood Crypto will function similarly to how you would buy stocks through their app.
You will search for the cryptocurrency symbols Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) where you can see their price and follow the history over 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year or over the entire history of the cryptocurrency.
When you want to “buy”, Robinhood will give you an estimated price. Since cryptocurrencies are known to have dramatic price swings in a day, Robinhood Crypto will put a “collar” around your buy price. So if the sale can’t execute at the price you agreed to, it waits for the price to return to what you wanted or notifies you of the price change.
In times of rocket price rises or drops, you can always set limits on your orders to automatically buy/sell where you want. This will help on those crazy price swing days we hear about in the news.
Will You Try Robinhood Crypto? I am
I’m currently on the list, just behind 97,296 people. Here is the signup to join the Robinhood Crypto Waiting List.
I’m not a major advocate of cryptocurrencies, in fact, I don’t think they’re a big deal or will ever replace actual currency. I’ll only invest around $100 to say I’ve tried it and get my feet wet in the cultural phenomenon of cryptocurrencies. I’ll ride some of the hype and then exit without any qualms. It’s just nice that a stockbroker I trust and currently use is now making cryptocurrencies even easier to buy and sell, I have to try it.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
I’m on the list, too. I particularly curious how Robinhood Crypto will affect the price of crypto, since from what I understand you can withdrawal or deposit any crypto, only buy or sell. It’ll be interesting, to say the least.
When I first heard that Robinhood was adding cyptocurrency, my first thought was to create a blog post about it!
I was very happy to see your post about it! As I write this, bitcoin is <$10k. It will be interesting to see if Robinhood has a visible effect on the crypto world. I think the next app I may get will be the Robinhood app, using your link! It is great to see some competition for Coinbase finally!
Nice! Even with the price drop I’m curious about cryptocurrencies. I’m a little more interested with Ethereum than I am Bitcoin now, but I’m curious to see how it goes! Robinhood usually starts pretty basic buying/selling, but free commissions. They tend to grow their services as time goes on. =)
Glad you’re also on the list!
-Andrew
Hey Hayes!
You should still absolutely still create a post about it! I’m definitely wary about Bitcoin or any Cryptocurrency that starts losing value. Since it’s all faith-based, once people stop the hype and stall out, I expect it to be nearly impossible to regain that momentum. We’ll see though!
PS. Yes, I’m glad Coinbase is finally getting some competition!
Thanks for commenting!
-Andrew
Check out furcoins, there you can buy or sell bitcoins without stress!
Happy Saturday my friend,
Stopping by to check up on you. Hope all is well. I’m wondering what you’ll publish next about the side hustle. Keep me posted. I’m happy to share links to your blog on DNN. Stop by and feel free to comment on the forum threads and blogs anytime. 🙂