The addition of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum swapping is a significant step for Robinhood and in response to requests from its user base.
Robinhood Markets Inc’s self-custody web3 wallet has announced that it has added support for Bitcoin and Dogecoin. According to a Wednesday blog post, Robinhood Wallet users will also be able to conduct in-app swaps on the Ethereum network. At launch, the service was available to select users for over 200 tokens and is expected to roll out to all users in the coming weeks. Users can swap without holding any ETH. Network fees are automatically designed to be deducted from the tokens they hold. The platform believes this approach will make the onboarding of users to DeFi easier.
“With Robinhood Wallet we stripped away many of the complexities of DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem, and reduced some of the challenges and barriers to entry for everyday people,” said Johann Kerbrat, General Manager of Robinhood Crypto. “We’ve been really encouraged by the adoption so far, and are excited to keep building for our customers around the world as we ship new features and expand support for new networks and tokens.”
Robinhood first rolled out its wallet service to select iOS users in September 2022 with Polygon as the first blockchain. Ethereum was the next blockchain supported by the wallet followed by layer-2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism. The addition of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum swapping is a significant step for Robinhood and in response to requests from its user base. Currently, the wallet has hundreds of thousands of users in about 140 countries.
Since the iOS app became available to users worldwide in March of this year, the company has made several additions to it including a web3 browser that allows users to connect to decentralized apps directly from their wallet. Robinhood also launched Robinhood Connect, a service that enables eligible users in the United States to directly purchase or transfer crypto using the wallet. In addition, the platform has expanded its rewards program to include “learning rewards, which allows eligible users to complete short lessons to earn USDC”.
The company also revealed that Android support is expected to come later this year and users can join a waitlist to be notified when the service becomes available.
This latest addition to the wallet comes after the company reported a trading volume of $69.2 billion in July despite a general slowdown in the crypto market. Robinhood also noted a 38% drop in trading volume compared to a year ago. The platform’s Monthly Active Users (MAU) saw a slight recovery in July, increasing by 200,000 from June but still a 17% decline from 13.2 million users during the same period last year.
Mercy Mutanya is a Tech enthusiast, Digital Marketer, Writer and IT Business Management Student.
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