March 28, 2024
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Robinhood will soon add cryptocurrency wallet to its platform. The wallets will start as a test, and the company’s setting up a waitlist where people can sign up to be among the first to get access. But this doesn’t mean that you can use Robinhood to buy stocks with Bitcoin. The company says you can sell crypto for another currency and use that money to buy stocks.

Robinhood says it’ll start testing wallets with an alpha group in the next few weeks. Robinhood’s crypto lead Christine Brown, she says the company will take the alpha users feedback and address it publicly. She says people on the waitlist will start getting access to wallets by the end of 2021 and that Robinhood’s crypto wallets will be generally available in early 2022.

Wallets have been a popular request from community members who feel like buying cryptocurrencies on Robinhood doesn’t really let them own crypto (for example, you currently can’t use your Ethereum holdings in the app to buy an NFT). 

For now, Robinhood’s wallet will only support holding the coins Robinhood Crypto supports, covering major coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. Brown tells me the company is looking to expand the currencies available on its platform in the future.

In August, the company’s CEO promised that wallets would be coming and said that the company wanted its security to be bulletproof.

The company said that wallets will have identity verification and multifactor authentication that will sometimes ask for a picture of your ID or a selfie to ensure that it’s actually you trying to carry out a transaction, as well as email and phone verification.

The company will be responsible for the keys used to unlock your wallet instead of managing it yourself. It means giving up some level of control, but it also takes away a lot of responsibility. However, Robinhood says that users will be able to move crypto purchased on the platform into other wallets if you so choose.

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