Robinhood, a commission-free stock trading app, has recently announced that Georgia residents can now use its Robinhood Crypto service, allowing them to buy and sell bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, litecoin, and dogecoin.
The company’s cryptocurrency trading service has been slowly rolling out in the US. Initially, it was only available in four states, and is now in 18, according to Robinhood’s support page.
Robinhood Crypto is coming to Georgia, and we're feelin' peachy! Trade cryptocurrencies, commission-free. 🍑 pic.twitter.com/8eX57gv8sw
— Robinhood (@RobinhoodApp) August 2, 2018
The announcement comes shortly after the company added bitcoin cash, litecoin, and dogecoin to its platform. Its cryptocurrency trading service is expanding partly thanks to a funding round in which the company raised $363 million at a $5.6 billion valuation.
Robinhood has to work with regulators on a state-by-state basis before letting its users trade cryptocurrencies on its app, hence the slow expansion. As CryptoGlobe covered, the company is in talks with regulators to offer banking services like savings accounts to its users.
Earlier this year the company’s chief executive officer Baiju Bhatt stated sovereign nations will adopt cryptocurrencies, in a seemingly bullish approach. He said:
I think sovereign nations are going to have cryptocurrencies as their default currencies at some point. I think this is largely inevitable, whether that happens next year or in 15 years I don’t know but I’m almost 100% convinced that’s going to happen.
Robinhood is not the only company offering cryptocurrency users easily accessible trading services. Square’s Cash app, led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, added cryptocurrency buy and sell options this year, and as of May raked in $200,000 from them.
Popular payments service Skrill added cryptocurrency buy and sell options late last month, available for users in over 30 countries. Its services offer support for over 40 fiat currencies, and now for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, and litecoin.
Notably these platforms seemingly act as custodians as users often don’t get access to their own private keys when buying cryptos through them. Instead, they are allowed to buy, sell, and hold their cryptos, with only a few allowing them to send over funds.
The competition has nevertheless affected the leading San Francisco-based exchange Coinbase, which has recently seen crypto’s falling price affect its popularity. The company recently rebranded its GDAX exchange to Coinbase Pro, which launched to little fanfare, further affecting its popularity.
