Robinhood, the popular online retail investing platform, has been working on a crypto wallet for some time now, and it appears they have finally released the app for beta testing. This beta version will allow a limited number of users to withdraw their crypto assets using the platform. Specifically, only the first 1,000 users who signed up to the app’s waitlist can participate in beta testing.
The users included in the wallet’s beta testing phase can withdraw funds up to $2999 over ten overall transactions per day. If you’re enthusiastic about investing in general, you’re probably familiar with Robinhood, as it’s a big name in this sector.
Robinhood is a financial services platform that Citadel Securities supports. It not only provides stock trading but crypto trading as well. Since mid-2021, the crypto users of the platform have been highly anticipating the release of Wallets. It was also around that time when they introduced the waitlist. The last public count of the waitlist sign-ups, which was around November, revealed that 1.6 million users had signed their names. That’s approximately 7% of the platform’s overall user base.
The number of testers allowed is only limited to 1000, but Robinhood plans on increasing this number to 10000 by Match. According to the company’s official announcement last January 20:
For wallet testers who don’t already have an existing Robinhood account, they’re required to participate in the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) identification system and use a two-factor authentication app. Robinhood Crypto COO Christine Brown posted a tweet today saying that even though the Beta testing program is ongoing, the company will still work to finalize some features in the app. Such features include “QR scanning experiences,” block explorer support, and more.
Over the duration of the Beta program, we will be working to finalize the send and receive flows and add delightful QR scanning experiences, improved transaction history, and block explorer support so you can see your transactions on-chain— and more!https://t.co/db5afxwQWx
— Christine (Hall) Brown (@christine_hall) January 20, 2022
Before the release of Robinhood’s Wallets, users who purchased crypto on the platform couldn’t withdraw nor privately store their funds. In other words, the purchase is called a crypto transaction only by name. However, Robinhood’s expanding crypto division is now looking like a full-fledged cryptocurrency exchange platform. The company states that this will “fully connect Robinhood crypto holders to the greater blockchain ecosystem for the very first time.”
Notably, many of the traders on Robinhood tend to prefer the popular meme token Dogecoin (DOGE). In Q2 2021, about 41% of Robinhood’s total revenue was thanks to DOGE. By Q3 2021, it was 19%. Some rumors have been floating around, claiming that Robinhood might list Shiba Inu (SHIB) since Robinhood co-founder Vlad Kardapoltsev recently remarked on how SHIB token holders seem to be rising these days.
