Financial services company and popular application Robinhood is considering expanding its offerings by adding new crypto features. One of those the ability for users to transfer assets into external crypto wallets.
In a webcast event this Saturday structured around the firm’s plans to offer an initial public offering (IPO), Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev reasserted an expectation set in March when he had hinted to establishing a crypto wallet and promised the world that it would come soon.
During the recent event, Tenev confirmed the company’s works in progress:.
“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.”
Robin Hood, 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.
The webcast event was held as Robinhood is readying for an IPO later this week. As per SEC filings on the IPO, the company plans to sell 55 million shares with the price expected to range between $38 and $42 per share. Robinhood is expecting a net $2.3 billion to be raised that will subsequently value the business at $35 billion.
Most crypto clients have been less than impressed by the lack of a crypto wallet in the past, leading them to move to other exchanges that offer users a wallet. Despite this, Robinhood has continued showing decent growth numbers and total numbers of users has increased significantly. 6 million new users joined in the first two months of the year, adding to the 13 million users the firm had already in its ranks prior to the start of the year.
Doge & GameStop
Robinhood was founded in 2013 and has since evolved from a mere financial services company in the stock sector into a crypto-oriented business. Crypto made up 17% of all the revenue the company accrued during Q1 of this year. The company also revealed that the latest Dogecoin mania had contributed to 34% of its transaction-based revenue, about 6% of the total revenue.
Robinhood has been in the midst of some controversy and regulatory battles. The company was recently hit with a $70 million fine by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in June for misleading customers, resulting in significant losses.
Prior to that, Robinhood has faced some serious scrutiny from its users and regulators recently over issues of its trading platform underperforming especially during the peak market moments. The app had blocked purchases for GameStop, AMC, and other stocks after a massive frenzy from Reddit group WallStreetBets, who took on huge hedge giants by setting up short squeeze.
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Source: Igaming
