Robinhood Crypto Is Now Available in All US States, Including Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands - Decrypt
07/02/2024 12:00As Robinhood prepares to expand internationally, "it was making sense to finish what we started in the U.S.," said Johann Kerbrat.
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Go to Alpha ReportsRobinhood Crypto is now available in all 50 states as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. That means starting today, users in all U.S. territories will be able to trade 15 assets on Robinhood Crypto, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Avalanche.
In the states, Robinhood Crypto's primary competition comes from crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken. But the addition of one state and two new American territories means it's got both of them beat in terms of availability to U.S.-based customers.
Unlike the two other U.S. exchanges, Robinhood's volume isn't tracked on price aggregators like CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap. Rather, Robinhood tends to report its volumes along with its quarterly earnings.
Robinhood saw $7.1 billion worth of crypto traded on its app, a 30% decrease from the $10.1 billion it saw in April, according to its latest report. The company's crypto business is still dwarfed by its equities business, which saw $86.8 billion traded in May, up 23% from $70.7 billion in April, according to the company.
The expansion news was made possible by acquiring an extra license at Robinhood and easing rules at the state level, Johann Kerbrat, vice president and general manager of the company's crypto unit, told Decrypt.
"In Puerto Rico we got a money transmitter license and in Hawaii, they actually ended the current system that they had in place that was kind of preventing us to execute there," he said.
Just last week, the Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and Technology Development Corporation jointly announced that crytpo firms "no longer require a Hawai‘i-issued money transmitter license to conduct business within the state."
And in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where there aren't currently any state-level cryptocurrency rules, there were no regulatory hurdles to overcome.
"In our effort also to go international and to start being available in the EU, it was making sense to finish what we started in the U.S. and make sure that we're available everywhere in the U.S," Kerbrat said.
It's been a bullish summer for Robinhood Crypto. Just last month, the company announced that it had acquired crypto exchange Bitstamp in a $200 million cash deal. On that front, Kerbrat said that things are still on track to be completed by early 2025.
"It's going to be a long road," he said. "We have to do the chain of control and some of the closing conditions, so we don't expect the close to happen until H1 of 2025."
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