Robinhood to begin crypto wallet trials in October

Equity trading and investment company Robinhood has announced it will begin trials of crypto wallets by the start of October.

The announcement comes after they were first mentioned by CEO Vlad Tenev back in June.

“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,” he said.

The long-awaited announcement will be well-received by users who have asked for a fully-functioning cryptocurrency wallet ever since the introduction of crypto on the service.

Robinhood breached the public conscience back during the GME short squeeze saga in January of this year, during which it removed the stock from the app as a result of high market volatility caused by amateur traders.

Currently, Robinhood users cannot move their cryptocurrency purchases to other wallets. Instead, they are given what is effectively an I-owe-you that the company will pay the customer the assumed value of the currency they have purchased. There are also a limited number of available cryptocurrencies to buy and sell.

The introduction of crypto to Robinhood has been hugely successful up to this point despite these limitations. The platform saw an increase of six million users after it added cryptocurrencies to its services at the start of the year. With crypto traders totalling 60% of its user base, the value of crypto transactions on its service surpassed equity transactions for the first time in Q2.

For those who are already members you can sign up to the waiting list to get access to crypto wallets before anyone else – and new users can join the waiting list by creating a new account.

The full wallet rollout is expected to come sometime in early 2022.