Buoyant Robinhood not concerned about crypto profits

Vlad Tenev, the Co-CEO of Robinhood, says his firm will basically process cryptocurrency trades free of fees, which means it will lose tens of millions of dollars in quaterly profits from trades.

“We don’t intend to make very much money on it at all for the foreseeable future. We intend to operate it as a break even business,” Tenev says. The trading platform is now available in 16 US states.

Robinhood’s strategy is parallel to that of $26-billion PayTech venture, Square, founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who plans to aggressively expand his cryptocurrency business with minimised profits.

“It’s the same story, with the majority of wallets and exchanges…customers are paying exorbitant fees right now, anywhere from 1.5% to 5% — a very sizeable fee. Our approach is to use technology and automation to put the vast majority of the value of that transaction back into customers’ pockets, and we find the regulatory structure around that,” says Tenev.