Robinhood, an application for stock trading quite popular among young investors, has added two new cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, to its expanding bouquet of digital currencies that can be bought and sold via the platform.
The app made headlines a few months back when it took on the virtual currency space with zero fees for the transaction. This commission-less stock trading platform has become a favorite among the youth interested in investing and has been offering transactions in Bitcoins and Ethereum for a while now.
While it’s looking to grow its reach by introducing Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, the fact that it is available in just 17 states of the USA can act as a deterring factor.
Probably even more notably, the company stated that adding support for in-app coin transfers was on the cards. Currently, customers can only buy and sell supported virtual currencies through this medium but cannot make deposits, withdrawals, and transfers.
Meanwhile, the brokerage platform has also promised to keep expanding the list of currencies supported to be traded over the platform. Adding these two new coins is likely to help the firm bag customers who are not too enthusiastic about more traditional digital currency alternatives like the Bitcoin. Moreover, since the regulatory risk of the virtual currencies is rather low, adding these coins are not a particularly difficult move.
Robinhood has claimed that right now it is trying to break even, rather than make profits in its operations in the digital currency space as it aims to hike its market share and inch towards becoming the world’s largest platform supporting cryptocurrency. Backed by an impressive equities’ trade business and a substantially large funding, Robinhood is positioned rather well to take on a profitless venture of a large enough scale and standing.
It has also been reported that the firm, which had a valuation of $5.6 billion as of May, has also been in talks with regulatory bodies to secure a national banking charter, something its fellow finance and technology-oriented firms like Square have so far been unable to land.