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Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
- coolspot 9y agoCoinbase (aka GDAX) is extremely profitable, making couple million per day in fees. Evey piece of this pie is sweet, so we will probably see more serious legit US-based players on this market of casual crypto trading for housewives.
- WhiteOwlLion 9y agoCoinbase bought GDAX. GDAX fee structure is different from Coinbase. Coinbase is geared towards consumers and they take bigger fees for buying. GDAX is geared toward professionals and take way less fees for buying and selling.
- dahdum 9y agoCoinbase built GDAX, used to be called Coinbase Exchange.
- trothamel 9y agoI wonder what the thinking behind the name is. It seems like a bad idea to entrust your money to a startup that is named for someone who's famous for "stealing from the rich".
- rublev 9y agoIf you have any branding ideas for "stealing from the poor" that will get those poor to use it, I'm all ears.
- RosanaAnaDana 9y agoCash4Gold?
- crankylinuxuser 9y agoI think something that rhymes with "Bells Largo" would be a good place to start! Or if you're going for the sweet investor moneydrop, go for something like "Sharing Economy". That says "We steal from the poor and give to the rich" like no other!
- arethuza 9y agoLotteries? [I remember the UK National Lottery being described as a "tax on stupidity"]
- kbutler 9y agoPayday Lending http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2016/01/payday-loan-facts-and-the-cfpbs-impact http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheet... "annual percentage rates averaging 391 percent." (That's not a typo) "Average borrowers earn about $30,000 per year" "Most borrowers pay more in fees than they originally received in credit " "each year, spending $9 billion on loan fees. "
- jlamberts 9y agoI think the idea for the original product (I.e. non cypto) is that it's target the "little guy" with no commission on trades. So people feel like they're taking from the rich institutional investors.
- tannerwj 9y agoBecause Robin Hood gave back the money the rich stole from the poor. It is just a way to level the playing field
- xanderstrike 9y agoE*Trade and other online brokers are the "rich," with their silly fees and ridiculous limits on when you can take your money out. Robinhood, by not having fees, takes the stock market from the rich and opens it up to everyone else. IMO it's a great name.
- bluntfang 9y agowho cares, it's working. you're talking about it. look at all this free marketing.
- pdude444 9y agoThis is amazing! I have been following robinhood for years, can’t wait to move my bitcoin away from coinbase
- lettergram 9y agoI'd put money on their backend being something such as CoinBase...
- sabareesh 9y agoI hope not
- dahdum 9y agoThey are listing like 16 coins/tokens, so it has to be more than just Coinbase/GDAX.
- vthallam 9y agoThey are launching tracking options for 16 coins and actual trading only for Bitcoin and Ethereum. So it might be a while before you see all 16 on Robinhood.
- dahdum 9y agoOh my bad...misread that then. Probably GDAX in that case, now that Coinbase is offering custodial services I wonder if they aren't just using that.
- CodeSheikh 9y agoNice TRON-esque theme. TRON as in the classic arcade game/movie not the TRON crypto currency.
- reificator 9y agoI didn't even know that was a distinction that now had to be made.
- Kiro 9y agoI actually thought it was referring to TRON the cryptocurrency before reading the whole comment so there's that.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cwperkins 9y agoDoes anyone know what happens in the event that a brokerage like robinhood fails? Are the assets insured by a federal agency or is it wiser to switch my portfolio to another broker?
- jlgaddis 9y agoRead the small print at the bottom of the page? > Robinhood Financial is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) ... > Robinhood Crypto is not a member of FINRA or SIPC. Cryptocurrencies are not stocks and your cryptocurrency investments are not protected by either FDIC or SIPC insurance.
- cwperkins 9y agoThank you
- 013a 9y agoAll of the assets you have in Robinhood aren't actually held by Robinhood; they're held by Apex, which is a huge firm that many companies use. If Robinhood goes down, your assets are still with them and there'd be some reasonable way to transfer them to another brokerage. If Apex goes down, which is vastly more unlikely, Federal SIPC insurance kicks in up to $500,000.
- dsr_ 9y agoAccording to all that light print at the bottom of the website, up to $500K in securities are protected... and all your crypto belongs to whoever manages to grab it, sue all you like afterwards.
- thisisit 9y agoWasn't there a crypto robinhood called cobinhood already? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119362
- badmadrad 9y agoIts based in Asia and its shady. So Robinhood is much needed.
- lettergram 9y agoIf anyone is interested, my company is working on an investment advisor for cryptocurrencies (and stocks): https://projectpiglet.com/ https://projectpiglet.com/ It works very well for short-term trading on cryptocurrencies, still waiting to release the longer term strategy (buy and hold is honestly a great choice). We've just started revewing some of the results (since we launched last week), and we're already up stagaring amounts: https://blog.projectpiglet.com/2018/01/30-weekly-returns-using-piglet/ https://blog.projectpiglet.com/2018/01/30-weekly-returns-usi... Not to say it'll always be that way...
- dylanha 9y agoAnyone trading with a rangebound bot will have made money in the last two weeks with these stagnant prices. The heavy regret for me set in later when my rangebound bot sold Litecoin and Ethereum before they tripled.
- lettergram 9y agoUse the code: pigletbeta3 for 6 months free access, provided you give feedback at least once a month. It doesn't have that same issue you describe.
- googletazer 9y agoCool, I'll check it out
- lettergram 9y agoNote: It is in Beta, and we have limited data. Thus, expect a work in progress. Right now we need funds to continue development and add more data. So we will be charging if you don't provide feedback - so please help us improve! :)
- lewisflude 9y agoIs there a UK equivalent for Robinhood? Would be extremely keen to give it a go.
- Radle 9y agoBux? Allows trading a bunch of European and US CFDs. Also allows buying CFDs on Bitcoin. Unfortunately not on any other cryp currencies.
- rublev 9y agoBuy incrementally, hold. If all markets are tanking, cash to USD, wait for the blood bath to be over. Otherwise you are gambling. Accessible crypto is going to be a disaster simply because of unregulated markets. My friends get shakey when they lose $100 in the market, this is going to be "Weak Hands: The App". Or "Taking Candy From A Baby: The App". I had to lose ~$200k over the course of a couple months and only after then I started really getting into the swing of things and started making good money while also making it back. It took all that to realize that if I didn't day trade my yields would have been much much higher. Day trading is hard, don't do it unless you really truly know what you're doing. Reading crap about market psychology and fractals and fibonacci this and wave theory that is all trash and does not make you a trader. Here come the 'I lost my life savings' rants by people with weak hands. Regular people + unregulated market = blood bath.
- chatmasta 9y ago> If all markets are tanking, cash to USD Might not always be possible if the exchange closes, has liquidity issues, etc. It is certainly not advisable to expect to get any of your money back from a crypto exchange. Play with what you’re willing to lose.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago>Reading crap about market psychology and fractals and fibonacci this and wave theory that is all trash and does not make you a trader. reads crap about Tether propping up bitcoin price, without audits despite claims of USDT backed by USD immediately realize you're regular people and invest nothing in cryptocurrencies
- xya3453 9y ago> Invest in Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies > Cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, and options are now available side by side — all easily accessible in one app. Managing your investments just got even easier. There is a dangerous theme of companies aimed at millennials that misappropriate Bitcoin (etc) as an investment, when it is just glorified currency exchange speculation. Blurring these lines obscures the real-world value created through actual investments.
- DerfNet 9y agoI buy bitcoin, it changes in value, I cash out, I now have a different amount of money than I put in. How is that not an investment?
- tptacek 9y agoI put money down on a blackjack table, play a hand, win, and cash out with more money than I put in. How is that not an investment?
- tannerwj 9y agoBecause it is not luck that determines the outcome. However speculative Bitcoin is, it isn't based on luck
- tptacek 9y agoBecause...?
- tannerwj 9y agoBecause it is based on supply and demand, it's just more volatile than what you're used to. Doesn't make it luck
- vec 9y agoThe price is a function of the supply and demand. The supply is mostly a function of time, as defined by the blockchain's algorithms. The demand is a function of what, exactly? Still looks mostly like luck to me.
- cal5k 9y agoMy assumption here is that by "no-commissions" they mean that they're only making the bid/ask spread on transactions as a market maker?
- paulgb 9y agoI don't think they are making the market themselves, but my understanding is they are paid for order flow from those who do. I can only imagine the data is worth quite a bit too, assuming their EULA allows them to sell it.
- cal5k 9y agoAh interesting. So they can't front-run their own clients, but they can sell the data to others who will? ;-)
- loup-vaillant 9y agoThe web page reads: "Invest in Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies". Can someone change the title to better match the web page? "Crypto" is a bit confusing without "currency".
- nxsynonym 9y agoThe domain is crypto.robinhood.com and the website title is "Robinhood Crypto". Title is perfectly accurate.
- thaumaturgy 9y agoI was expecting a new cryptographic library and/or algorithm, and was looking forward to 33 highly technical comments about how it compared to ECDSA or something. I suppose I should've known better.
- nxsynonym 9y agoYeah not saying it's a good choice on their part as it helps perpetuate the conflation between crypto and crypt-currency. Unfortunately this will be another case of literally/figuratively.
- Ajedi32 9y agoJust because the title is technically accurate, doesn't mean it's useful. An ideal headline should accurately and succinctly communicate the contents of the page it links to.
- sctb 9y agoOK, we've updated the title from “Introducing Robinhood Crypto”.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoThanks
- IronKettle 9y agoRelated, kinda: Robinhood seems to be pulling in a lot of different directions and there's all these "early access" features that never seem to actually, well, launch. I've now signed up for: * Web access (otherwise it's mobile-only) * Options trading * And now, cryptocurrency trading (because why not) and I haven't gotten access to any of them yet, even though Robinhood for web has been in "early access" for quite awhile now. So I signed up for this, but I have very little faith that I'll get access any time soon (even with the vague promise of early February).
- notyourwork 9y agoI'm really confused about why web access hasn't launched yet? Would think that is the easiest of them all and entirely in their own fate. Options and crypto seem like much more complicated endeavors but a website, ffs.
- jtmarmon 9y agopeople will not spend more money trading on a website. not having one is an inconvenience. options and crypto are more places for people to put their money
- thrill 9y agoI blame Apple. No, really. When Robinhood first launched it was intentionally targeted at iOS users, hence the almost automatic focus of building an app vice a mobile friendly progressive web app. Then the push to target Android users - but since "we do apps" is already the corporate mindset, the next thing is not a web page, but yet another app. Eventually they get around to the web. A company I left a few years ago went down the same path.
- pfista 9y agoI’m using web access and it’s great- they just haven’t fully rolled it out yet I suppose.
- kaycebasques 9y agoI remember being in a startup that promised features before they could deliver, and how it was a symptom of shoddy business practices in general. So when I consider the fact that I have a decent amount of money tied up in Robinhood, and I see them promising features without delivering, I get uneasy. Otherwise it's a great product. I'm really only writing this in the hope that a Robinhood person catches eye on this comment and takes it to heart.
- dayjah 9y agoAs a very happy user of Robinhood financial, this really does look exciting. If you’ve not used robinhood, and have a little interest in investing, I’ve found their simple interface to be very nice to use relative to the more heavy weight options I’ve had experience with (etrade, schwab, fidelity). I didn’t see how their crypto offering would allow me to transfer my wallet from Coinbase to them, do I create a new wallet, and then send money from one to another? If so it’s unfortunate that I’d need to incur transaction fees to onboard.
- kaycebasques 9y agoThe main draw for me is no commission fees on virtually any stock or ETF. Although I did just try to buy SPXH (S&P500 + Volatility Hedge) and for some mysterious reason it was "not available for trading on Robinhood", even though it's an ETF with a not-miniscule AUM ($50M). I pinged their support about this, and it took them over a week to get back to me to ask what type of security SPXH is.
- pembrook 9y ago$50M is a minuscule AUM for any ETF, especially one meant for trading (volatility hedged vehicles are not good for buy and hold). Institutional investors, Hedge funds, etc will not touch such an illiquid fund.
- kaycebasques 9y agoI mean, in the big-time institutional scheme, I understand that. But from what I've read, $10M is where a fund gets in danger of being delisted.
- thepra 9y agoIt's not available for my country, Italy... Just why?
- mcabs 9y agoIt will be interesting to see how they allow people to fund their accounts. With their traditional investments, they have to follow tradional rules with respect to credit. But a more "accessible" and leveraged model like Coinbase, would be a stark departure from their normal modes of operation.
- pixie_ 9y agoWooo this is awesome! Robinhood gets it :) I already use Robinhood for trading, so this would be a one stop shop. Plus the fact that it integrates with TurboTax means there's zero work to pay taxes on trades. Keeping track of the taxes is my biggest hassle trading crypto. Hey Robinhood if you're reading I'd like BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR, DOGE, XRP, XLM, XEM
- beeskneecaps 9y agoGRLC!
- SteveGregory 9y agoI think the feature makes lots of sense for Robinhood from a business perspective, but I cannot see the majority of Robinhood users fully understanding the risks of buying cryptocurrencies as an investment. It feels similar penny stocks and late-90s tech IPOs in that the price is driven primarily by uncertainty/unknowability in outcome and hype from recent returns. Also I'm curious if Robinhood Gold (Robinhood's version of margin accounts) will work here, letting people easily borrow money to buy cryptocurrencies. This seems particularly dangerous for a product targeting small/layman investor.
- gonzoflip 9y agoI agree that margin trading on Cryptocurrencies is extremely risky and not fully understood by the majority of people doing it. I am very anxious to see what will happen in the long term since so many people hopped on the bandwagon in the past 2 months and I believe a quite large portion of them went into credit card debt to do it. I have been telling people I know personally that I thought Coinbase allowing the use of credit cards to purchase was asinine, and I am curious to see what will happen. Capitol One is now blocking all coinbase transactions, and Chase is now running them as cash advances, so the credit card companies are aware. I think there may be a large amount of CC defaults due to cryptocurrency "investors" realizing they are in over their heads in the coming months.
- dahdum 9y agoTheir FAQ states that margin isn't allowed for crypto, or suitable as collateral
- kaycebasques 9y ago(Pure speculation warning) I was wondering why they were taking so long to put out their options trading and web UI. I wonder if this had something to do with it.
- aaronarduino 9y agoHopefully, this isn't a sign that Robinhood is going downhill. I really enjoy the "zero fee" stock trading.
- sabareesh 9y agoIf any one interested in building your trading bot here is open api spec for robinhood. https://github.com/sabareeshkkanan/robinhood https://github.com/sabareeshkkanan/robinhood
- chirau 9y agoYou should put better documentation. It's useless without instruction
- JustAnotherPat 9y agoBULLISH
- orev 9y ago“
- krapp 9y agoIt can be short for either. Don't be a language prescriptivist, it's a fight you can't win.
- fra 9y agoI'm disappointed in Robinhood. They've done great work making equity investment approachable to people who are traditionally alienated by it. Their mission, "[...] to democratize the American financial system." caries fantastic social value and generates a lot of good will for them. Entering cryptocurrencies IMO runs counter to that mission. It's a cash grab which will expose their users to poorly-understood risks and will likely not put anyone on a more stable financial footing.
- xya3453 9y ago> It's a cash grab which will expose their users to poorly-understood risks and will likely not put anyone on a more stable financial footing. That's already the case. Their entire user-base is comprised of naive stock market investors. If they really wanted to bring about a more stable financial footing for their users they would just offer dressed-up ETFs.
- fra 9y agoPoint taken, investing in individual stocks may very well not be helping anyone.
- vasilipupkin 9y agoI take it you didn't buy amazon 10 years ago for a 1600% return?
- jsutton 9y agoOr they want to offer their customers a no-fee way of buying cryptocurrencies as easily as stocks? I think this is a great move by them. There's no question that a growing number of investors are demanding access to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- product50 9y agoDon't use it if you don't want to. But literally millions of American citizens are getting into crypto right now (looking at Coinbase's numbers). And if this is an emerging area, I don't see any problems with them coming in. I feel most negative comments on this thread are from folks who missed the crypto train last year and are just bitter and trash any new development in this area.
- aphextron 9y agoThis is it. Margin trading on Bitcoin for unsophisticated retail investors. Here we go...
- blueline 9y ago..doesn't bitfenix already facilitate margin trading for cryptocurrencies, which (even worse) uses Tether?
- aphextron 9y agoMy point is that things like Bitfinex are far, far from being mainstream consumer iPhone apps. Combined with the massive credit bubble we are in (any warm body with a 600+ credit score can easily get tens of thousands of dollars in credit cards within an hour right now), this is precisely how speculative bubbles run out of control and crash the economy.
- brndnmtthws 9y agoHas anyone else noticed that there is no documentation about withdrawing funds? It looks like you can only buy and hold within the app. Seems a bit pointless unless you're strictly interested in day trading and don't actually care about crypto. If this is true, that means these are cash settled and they might not actually be backed by any assets. That idea is scary and I would avoid it.
- vicarrion 9y agoI would be extremely wary about trusting robinhood now. I have a stock account with them and back in October I used their new feature to transfer stocks from other brokerages. However, there was never any selection for _which_ stocks you wanted to transfer so it transferred all of them without confirmation. After 4 back and forth support emails each taking multiple days to hear back on I finally gave up with them and got Vanguard to transfer some of the stocks back. Robinhood responded by deactivating my account until the transfer was complete, which it did a week later. Here I am mid January still waiting for my account to be reopened after creating a new support ticket for them to respond to.
- sgwealti 9y agoHow are they transferring the BTC to your wallet without paying the network/mining/transaction fees?
- twostorytower 9y agoMy guess is if you want to withdraw it off Robinhood you'll have to pay a standard network fee (Robinhood isn't taking a cut of that). They don't charge fees for trading, though.
- dawhizkid 9y agoSomething about Robinhood just makes me uneasy - clearly their main target market is the small retail investor who is sensitive to a $7/trade fee, but the low friction, mobile-first no fee stock trading experience they've created mostly serves to encourage bad investor behavior i.e. emotional, irrational day trading among people who can least afford it. Now they are "democratizing" margin trading (Robinhood Gold), options trading, and crypto...no professional investor who actually knows what he/she is doing is going to be served well by a mobile trading app - this is a play for the mostly uneducated retail investor (and small minority of knowledgable retail traders) who has no idea what they're getting into when they buy a call option in X or trade btc on margin. I remember seeing on their social a now deleted tweet that read "Trade fast, die young." Ugh.
- foobaw 9y agoI think Robinhood's purpose is exactly to promote "emotional, irrational day trading." Isn't that part of what impacts the market anyway? There are tons of bad traders in any given platform, and you're right that Robinhood increases that likelihood but you can't exactly blame an app for poor trading motivations. That's a due diligence.
- buttcoinslol 9y agoIt's a very good app for buying up small (50-500 dollar) blocks of ETFs to hold, which is what I do. Thanks for the free trades, VC guys.
- rocketpastsix 9y agoThats pretty smart.
- parasj 9y agoRobinhood makes money on execution (through exchange maker-taker fees [1] and reselling order flow to hedge funds or market makers). It's in their best interest to promote more volume to increase revenue. They're making money of each and every trade. [1] for example https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=bx_pricing https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=bx_pricing
- WhiteOwlLion 9y agoCoinbase 1 billion revenue in 2017 is going to dive in 2018 with Robinhood offering something better.
- roman_savchuk 9y agoHere is a thing about Robinhood: it does advertising in ineligible countries, apps are allowed to be downloaded, profiles must be filled in down to the last field and only then there is a message saying that you're not allowed to use the app because it's unavailable (really?) in your country. Guerilla data collection at its finest.
- canistr 9y agoSo who is responsible for Robinhood's orderbook? Are they partnering with an existing exchange to fulfill market/limit orders? Are they simply paying for the trading fees on behalf of users? If Robinhood isn't posting their orderbook, why would anyone trust that there are no fees or commissions when they could bake their costs directly into the price? There's no market regulation (a la Reg NMS) for cryptocurrencies, so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing Robinhood to take their cut? But if they are partnering with an exchange, why pick one over the other? Who will pay for the withdrawal/transaction fees?
- banterfoil 9y ago> so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing Robinhood to take their cut? Are you referring to market orders? I don't understand this. If I place a limit order for 1 share at $20. And the order gets filled at this price; where do you think Robinhood is taking a cut? I think the strategy you mention could be possible with market orders however.
- canistr 9y agoWell for one, cryptocurrencies (at their current prices) can be divided much greater than simply "1 share". I'm saying that the price that Robinhood sets is dependent on orderbook price which they control. Example: you buy $20 USD worth of BTC on Robinhood. They give you 0.001750 BTC. But on other exchanges, you would have received 0.001812 BTC instead. The differing price of BTC between exchanges gives them their "commission/fee". The lack of transparency in pricing gives them the advantage in exchange for retail consumer confusion over "zero fees".
- aarontait 9y agoAnybody know if you're able to transfer your cryptocurrency on Coinbase to Robinhood? In theory, I could avoid Coinbase's fees for selling.
- twodave 9y agoYou already can. Just move that stuff over to GDAX (also owned by Coinbase, and free to transfer over) and place a limit sell order.
- polskibus 9y agoFacebook messenger doesn't let me share that url to friends. What the hell.
- aphextron 9y agoWhy would you ever want to visit a website that Zuckerberg doesn't approve of? Dump that evil spyware, and tell your friends to as well.
- dom96 9y agoAndddd still not available in the UK. Exactly as it was the last time I looked into Robinhood (probably around a year ago).
- dig1 9y agoUnrelated to cryptocurrencies, did Robinhood ever managed to roll ability to trade US stocks outside US? From this [1] (almost tree years ago), looks like they started with Australia, but that is it. Anyone can suggest sane brokerage with API access allowing trading US stocks, ETFs or options for non-US citizens, with minimal deposit? I'm aware of Ameritrade; how about other alternatives? [1] http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2015/5/4/onward http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2015/5/4/onward
- justboxing 9y ago"Corner the market, then raise the price. Simple economics" - Walter White #breakingbad
- TaylorGood 9y agoWell, just hours after receiving an email from Robinhood for early access the waiting list was already 255k people. Join the line!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- juba08 9y agodoes anyone know what is their revenue model? i found this in wikipedia: "The company makes money from interest earned on customers' cash balances and margin lending." is that possible in cyrpto currency?
- thisisit 9y agoIt will be interesting to see if Robinhood understands this market completely. For one, Coinbase has a lot of trouble with KYC and fake accounts. Now they have to come up with innovative ways to stop it. Two, this market can be very demanding. Stuff like delayed payments etc are instantly noticed.