Crypto Trading Platform Robinhood Lists USDC as First Stablecoin
Table of contents
Robinhood - First Crypto Trading Platform
In 2018, Robinhood first made its platform available for cryptocurrency trading. It has been continuously increasing the number of tokens over time. With the launch of USDC, there are presently 17 different cryptocurrencies that users of the Robinhood app can trade. The action implies that Robinhood's business model would progressively focus on cryptocurrency trading.
Chris Koegel, head of investor relations at Robinhood, mentioned cryptocurrency trading as one of the company's three primary focus areas during its most recent results call, along with brokerage and money services. According to the company's earnings release, Koegel stated that:
“Our vision with crypto is to be the most trusted platform for customers to invest in crypto as well as the most trusted on-ramp to the decentralized web. Customers tell us that they want us to introduce more coins onto the platform.”
A large portion of the company's revenues come from sending trade orders to market participants like Citadel Securities, which pays Robinhood for access to its customers' incoming trade order information.
Filing With SEC
According to the company's most recent 10-Q filing with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), 68% of its income comes from paying for order flow. Some legislators, including SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, have criticized the technique as potentially being unfair to ordinary traders because of conflicts of interest between market makers and brokerages.
The filing stated that the business received $420 million in payment for order flow over the previous two fiscal quarters, $112 million of which originated from consumers trading cryptocurrencies. This is more than it collected from customers trading stocks on its platform ($65 million) but less than it earned from customers trading options ($240 million).
With a total value of $50.1 billion, USD Coin is now one of the most valuable stablecoins by market cap. Its price has been slightly fluctuating over time, hitting a high of $1.01 and a low of $0.995 in the last week.
