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Comment by htormey | Hacker News Reader

Somethings to note:

-Robinhood is not allowing you to transfer in crypto from outside.

-Robinhood does allow you to transfer crypto out but you have to go through extra verification steps.

The listing of so many altcoins in the robinhood app (monero, zcash, etc) plus it’s low fees makes buying on altcoin exchanges that only accept crypto like binance a lot less attractive. No longer will users have to buy $ltc/$eth on coinbase/gdax then transfer to another exchange to buy altcoins.

This will have a big impact on the crypto ecosystem. The gauntlet has been thrown down for coinbase.

Edit: my bad. I got confused by the app update, Robinhood are just displaying tracking data for alts :

https://ibb.co/noPN8H

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>-Robinhood is not allowing you to transfer in crypto from outside.

So robinhood is the sole supplier of coins on their exchange? Imagine if NYSE was also running a prop trading operation on the side, talk about conflicts of interest...

That means net as a population you can't sell, you can only buy. With that in place the price can only go in one direction.

Seems like they want to allow it but are worried about laundering / being a bitcoin tumbler?

Does robinhood run their own prop group or just sell their order flow to Goldman, etc? What a scummy organization...

All brokers sell order flow information. It's not a big deal, or even a deal at all.

How do you think they make money with a no commission service? Order flow has value.

One of the above, hence the question. (I assume the latter and that they’re just a marketing organization.) The scummy part is that their customers don’t know this.

What makes you think their customers don't know this? It's in their brokerage disclosure statement, same as anybody else who does this. It just doesn't... matter. Zero-fee transaction trading from my phone outweighs this.

It doesn't matter if money doesn't matter, yeah. Zero-fee transaction trading does not outweigh this, unless you have only peanuts to trade such that trading fees are more significant than spreads/execution.

avoid the spread by cross-checking and issuing a limit order. no fee on those, either.

Almost zero customers at any brokerage are aware of this - how many do you think read the fine print? It’s an unethical industry. And zero fee trading is great, except it’s not zero fee. But “stupid people deserve to get fleeced” seems to be enough ethics for most people.

Afaik Robinhood is actually buying and selling coins on existing exchanges and baking any fees into the spread. For example, gdax doesn't charge any fee if you are a maker/using limit orders.

> The listing of so many altcoins in the robinhood app (monero, zcash, etc) plus it’s low fees makes buying on altcoin exchanges that only accept crypto like binance a lot less attractive.

I don't understand. My understanding is they allow only BTC and ETH on their platform. So, if I want to buy a ICO token I do need to buy ETH here/GDAX etc and transfer to another exchange.

Editing for source:

https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000088623...

Robinhood are listing monero, zcash and a bunch of other coins. So you can buy them directly for fiat.

Coinbase allow you to buy ltc, eth, bch and btc. If you wanted to buy monero you would first have to buy one of those then transfer to another exchange.

Edit: my bad. I got confused by the new Robinhood ux:

https://ibb.co/noPN8H

Are you sure? The linked article says:

Anyone that uses the Robinhood platform to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum today comes into a market that has lost roughly half of its value over the past couple of months.

I believe those coins can be tracked but not bought.

Better source:

https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000088623...

Starting in February, Robinhood Crypto supports buying, selling and real-time market data for:

Bitcoin (BTC)

Ethereum (ETH)

Robinhood Crypto also supports real-time market data for the following:

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Dash (DASH)

Dogecoin (DOGE)

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

Lisk (LSK)

Litecoin (LTC)

Monero (XMR)

NEO (NEO)

OmiseGO (OMG)

Qtum (QTUM)

Ripple (XRP)

Stellar (XLM)

Zcash (ZEC)

So not really the game changer you are saying it might be.

My bad. I am still in the queue to have crypto trading turned on in the Robinhood app. When you open the app it makes it look like they are supporting multiple coins at launch:

https://ibb.co/noPN8H

You can only trade BTC and ETH at this time. Robinhood allows you to track 16 currencies, although I imagine this tracking is going to be used to estimate interest in other cryptocurrencies to integrate.

Ah okay, I am still in the waiting list and misread that. I thought they were listing all of those coins.

So you can't sell your crypto there? Where is all this bitcoin coming from then? Sounds like robinhood is hoping for a huge disparity, so they can dump what they have for better prices.

Correct, you can’t sell crypto currencies you didn’t buy in Robinhood. This is listed in the faq they provide.

https://ibb.co/dHNENc

Damn! If they really supported Monero I'd sign up right now. I'm currently on Binance it it's kind of a pain in the ass.

Kraken supports Monero and USD/CAD withdrawls.

I hardly get 502s anymore since the upgrade.

Nice, I might have to look into them. I believe I did I couple months ago and they had a long waiting period or a freeze on new accounts or something like that.

Nice! I assume you can transfer monero off kracken right? I’ll have to give them another look.

Yes, and transfers in and out don't take that long, maybe 15-20 minutes.

Same. I got really excited when I opened the app and saw the update. Then I read the fine print and alas it was just pricing data for alts. I would dump binance in a heart beat if I could buy alts on Robinhood or coinbase :(

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