E*Trade Financial Group, a massive online trading firm, is reportedly getting ready to add cryptocurrency trading to its platform, which currently has about 5 million users trading traditional financial assets.
According to a report published by Bloomberg citing a person familiar with the matter, E*Trade will start by adding bitcoin and ether to its platform, and will in the future consider adding other cryptocurrencies.
Given the firm’s large user base and reputation, it could help legitimize cryptocurrency trading for wary investors, who may have refused to enter the market after 2017’s bull run that took bitcoin to a near $20,000 all-time high, and last year’s bear market that saw it drop to a $3,200 low.
As recently covered, Bitfinex was accused of an $850 million ‘cover-up’ by New York’s Attorney General, a development that saw the price of the flagship cryptocurrency tumble and the cryptocurrency community react fiercely.
#ActiveTrader: Real-time technical pattern recognition now available through the Power E*TRADE platform pic.twitter.com/d5RfvfgqCf
— E*TRADE (@etrade) April 16, 2019
If the popular brokerage firm enters the market it’ll compete with the likes of Coinbase, which reached an $8 billion valuation last year, and with Robinhood, which was recently valued at $5.6 billion and has been letting its users buy and sell cryptos without paying fees.
The Robinhood app has reportedly been eyeing a potential initial public offering (IPO), and has recently launched a ‘digestible’ financial newsletter called Robinhood Snacks after making its first-ever acquisition.
Notably while some cryptocurrency exchanges like Bitfinex have a less-than-stellar reputation, others have seen users praise their efforts for months now. Binance, for example, has seen the price of its BNB token surge this year thanks to its developments, which include the launch of a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.