
Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies - uptown
https://crypto.robinhood.com/
======
dawhizkid
Something about Robinhood just makes me uneasy - clearly their main target
market is the small retail investor who is sensitive to a $7/trade fee, but
the low friction, mobile-first no fee stock trading experience they've created
mostly serves to encourage bad investor behavior i.e. emotional, irrational
day trading among people who can least afford it.

Now they are "democratizing" margin trading (Robinhood Gold), options trading,
and crypto...no professional investor who actually knows what he/she is doing
is going to be served well by a mobile trading app - this is a play for the
mostly uneducated retail investor (and small minority of knowledgable retail
traders) who has no idea what they're getting into when they buy a call option
in X or trade btc on margin.

I remember seeing on their social a now deleted tweet that read "Trade fast,
die young." Ugh.

~~~
nlowell
I think Robinhood does a great job of giving young traders the experience and
knowledge of what actual trading is like before they're managing really
meaningful amounts of money. College kids trading $500 on Robinhood are going
to become 30 year olds who have a much better sense of how markets work and
how emotion affects their own trading than college kids who are just
instructed to give all their savings to mutual funds. I think RH has a niche
and potential to really change things provided they don't do too much to
incentivize dangerous behavior (like the deleted tweet).

~~~
abrahamepton
Maybe, except the college kids who just give all their money to mutual funds
will make more money. The day-traders won't "learn how markets work," they'll
learn how to lose money by making dumb trades based on less information than
their counterparties. They won't learn anything, aaaannnnyyyyything, of actual
value.

~~~
vervez
College kid who started trading in RH a while ago here. After reading some
basic investment books from authors like Peter Lynch, Taleb, and What Jim
Paul, decided to get some experience in the markets. Invested a little saved
and since then made a decent return, better than if that money was in a bank.
So far, I'm doing better than the large-company mutual funds after 3 years,
but as I've been reading, that's probably good luck.

It's been an interesting experiment that gave me incentives to learn more
about financial markets, which I otherwise would not have touched. However, I
started by reading and knowing a little bit, so I won't touch crypto trading
until I know more.

~~~
Lewton
> Invested a little saved and since then made a decent return, better than if
> that money was in a bank. So far, I'm doing better than the large-company
> mutual funds after 3 years, but as I've been reading, that's probably good
> luck.

The only thing you should be comparing yourself against is the s&p500, if you
haven't beaten that, then you're down.

Also, the markets have been in an unprecedented bull run. Everything you've
learned will be useless once the tide turns

~~~
almost_usual
I believe the unprecedented bull run is also a contributor to Robinhood’s
success. Most of your mobile app day traders are going to drop off when the
market turns bearish.

~~~
skellera
I think many young people don’t understand this. They just think it’s
guaranteed returns at this point with the amazing market and btc, etc.

------
xya3453
> Invest in Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies

> Cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, and options are now available side by side —
> all easily accessible in one app. Managing your investments just got even
> easier.

There is a dangerous theme of companies aimed at millennials that
misappropriate Bitcoin (etc) as an investment, when it is just glorified
currency exchange speculation. Blurring these lines obscures the real-world
value created through actual investments.

~~~
DerfNet
I buy bitcoin, it changes in value, I cash out, I now have a different amount
of money than I put in. How is that not an investment?

~~~
tptacek
I put money down on a blackjack table, play a hand, win, and cash out with
more money than I put in. How is that not an investment?

~~~
darawk
A better question might be: How is anything an investment? If the stock market
is priced efficiently, it is as much a gamble as Bitcoin. The stock market is
of course not perfectly efficient, but it is likely extremely efficient
relative to the knowledge of your average retail investor. Which means that
buying Bitcoin or other cryptos is no more a gamble than any stock market
investment with a similar volatility.

~~~
Retric
What separates investing from gambling is the expected return for everyone is
greater than zero.

AKA buy stock at 100$ and sell it at 100$ does not mean you broke even. You
could have gotten 10$ in dividends. Now that positive may be small and some
people may lose money, but that's allowed as long as the expected returns end
up positive.

Bitcoin's can't have a net positive return because they only way to add money
into the system is via coin buyers. Further because of transaction costs it's
inherently negative sum.

~~~
AznHisoka
What about stocks with no dividends (which constitutes the vast majority)? By
your definition, only dividend investing and rental property investing is true
investing.

I'm not disagreeing with you. In fact I almost agree with you, but your
argument fails for most stocks.

~~~
umanwizard
Stocks with no dividends have some probability of paying a dividend (or doing
a buyback) in the future. If you could prove that a company will never pay a
dividend or do a buyback then its value would be zero.

~~~
tonyztan
What about Berkshire Hathaway? They said they wouldn't pay dividends.

~~~
umanwizard
You don’t know they never will forever. Buffet will die someday and his
successor might decide to pay a dividend.

~~~
AznHisoka
this is turning to a very insane argument.. So if Buffet signs a iron clad
legal contract that says no dividends ever for the duration of his company, it
means the stock is worth 0?

~~~
umanwizard
If such a thing were possible, then yes, it would.

------
vicarrion
I would be extremely wary about trusting robinhood now. I have a stock account
with them and back in October I used their new feature to transfer stocks from
other brokerages. However, there was never any selection for _which_ stocks
you wanted to transfer so it transferred all of them without confirmation.
After 4 back and forth support emails each taking multiple days to hear back
on I finally gave up with them and got Vanguard to transfer some of the stocks
back. Robinhood responded by deactivating my account until the transfer was
complete, which it did a week later. Here I am mid January still waiting for
my account to be reopened after creating a new support ticket for them to
respond to.

------
IronKettle
Related, kinda:

Robinhood seems to be pulling in a lot of different directions and there's all
these "early access" features that never seem to actually, well, launch.

I've now signed up for:

* Web access (otherwise it's mobile-only)

* Options trading

* And now, cryptocurrency trading (because why not)

and I haven't gotten access to any of them yet, even though Robinhood for web
has been in "early access" for quite awhile now.

So I signed up for this, but I have very little faith that I'll get access any
time soon (even with the vague promise of early February).

~~~
notyourwork
I'm really confused about why web access hasn't launched yet? Would think that
is the easiest of them all and entirely in their own fate. Options and crypto
seem like much more complicated endeavors but a website, ffs.

~~~
jtmarmon
people will not spend more money trading on a website. not having one is an
inconvenience. options and crypto are more places for people to put their
money

------
fra
I'm disappointed in Robinhood. They've done great work making equity
investment approachable to people who are traditionally alienated by it. Their
mission, "[...] to democratize the American financial system." caries
fantastic social value and generates a lot of good will for them.

Entering cryptocurrencies IMO runs counter to that mission. It's a cash grab
which will expose their users to poorly-understood risks and will likely not
put anyone on a more stable financial footing.

~~~
xya3453
> It's a cash grab which will expose their users to poorly-understood risks
> and will likely not put anyone on a more stable financial footing.

That's already the case. Their entire user-base is comprised of naive stock
market investors. If they really wanted to bring about a more stable financial
footing for their users they would just offer dressed-up ETFs.

~~~
fra
Point taken, investing in individual stocks may very well not be helping
anyone.

~~~
vasilipupkin
I take it you didn't buy amazon 10 years ago for a 1600% return?

------
SteveGregory
I think the feature makes lots of sense for Robinhood from a business
perspective, but I cannot see the majority of Robinhood users fully
understanding the risks of buying cryptocurrencies as an investment. It feels
similar penny stocks and late-90s tech IPOs in that the price is driven
primarily by uncertainty/unknowability in outcome and hype from recent
returns.

Also I'm curious if Robinhood Gold (Robinhood's version of margin accounts)
will work here, letting people easily borrow money to buy cryptocurrencies.
This seems particularly dangerous for a product targeting small/layman
investor.

~~~
gonzoflip
I agree that margin trading on Cryptocurrencies is extremely risky and not
fully understood by the majority of people doing it. I am very anxious to see
what will happen in the long term since so many people hopped on the bandwagon
in the past 2 months and I believe a quite large portion of them went into
credit card debt to do it. I have been telling people I know personally that I
thought Coinbase allowing the use of credit cards to purchase was asinine, and
I am curious to see what will happen.

Capitol One is now blocking all coinbase transactions, and Chase is now
running them as cash advances, so the credit card companies are aware. I think
there may be a large amount of CC defaults due to cryptocurrency "investors"
realizing they are in over their heads in the coming months.

------
trothamel
I wonder what the thinking behind the name is. It seems like a bad idea to
entrust your money to a startup that is named for someone who's famous for
"stealing from the rich".

~~~
rublev
If you have any branding ideas for "stealing from the poor" that will get
those poor to use it, I'm all ears.

~~~
kbutler
Payday Lending

[http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-
sheet...](http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-
sheets/2016/01/payday-loan-facts-and-the-cfpbs-impact)

"annual percentage rates averaging 391 percent." (That's not a typo)

"Average borrowers earn about $30,000 per year"

"Most borrowers pay more in fees than they originally received in credit "

"each year, spending $9 billion on loan fees. "

------
roman_savchuk
Here is a thing about Robinhood: it does advertising in ineligible countries,
apps are allowed to be downloaded, profiles must be filled in down to the last
field and only then there is a message saying that you're not allowed to use
the app because it's unavailable (really?) in your country. Guerilla data
collection at its finest.

------
dayjah
As a very happy user of Robinhood financial, this really does look exciting.
If you’ve not used robinhood, and have a little interest in investing, I’ve
found their simple interface to be very nice to use relative to the more heavy
weight options I’ve had experience with (etrade, schwab, fidelity).

I didn’t see how their crypto offering would allow me to transfer my wallet
from Coinbase to them, do I create a new wallet, and then send money from one
to another? If so it’s unfortunate that I’d need to incur transaction fees to
onboard.

~~~
kaycebasques
The main draw for me is no commission fees on virtually any stock or ETF.

Although I did just try to buy SPXH (S&P500 + Volatility Hedge) and for some
mysterious reason it was "not available for trading on Robinhood", even though
it's an ETF with a not-miniscule AUM ($50M). I pinged their support about
this, and it took them over a week to get back to me to ask what type of
security SPXH is.

~~~
pembrook
$50M _is_ a minuscule AUM for any ETF, especially one meant for trading
(volatility hedged vehicles are not good for buy and hold). Institutional
investors, Hedge funds, etc will not touch such an illiquid fund.

~~~
kaycebasques
I mean, in the big-time institutional scheme, I understand that. But from what
I've read, $10M is where a fund gets in danger of being delisted.

------
coolspot
Coinbase (aka GDAX) is extremely profitable, making couple million per day in
fees.

Evey piece of this pie is sweet, so we will probably see more serious legit
US-based players on this market of casual crypto trading for housewives.

~~~
WhiteOwlLion
Coinbase bought GDAX. GDAX fee structure is different from Coinbase. Coinbase
is geared towards consumers and they take bigger fees for buying. GDAX is
geared toward professionals and take way less fees for buying and selling.

~~~
dahdum
Coinbase built GDAX, used to be called Coinbase Exchange.

------
aphextron
This is it. Margin trading on Bitcoin for unsophisticated retail investors.
Here we go...

~~~
blueline
..doesn't bitfenix already facilitate margin trading for cryptocurrencies,
which (even worse) uses Tether?

~~~
aphextron
My point is that things like Bitfinex are far, far from being mainstream
consumer iPhone apps. Combined with the massive credit bubble we are in (any
warm body with a 600+ credit score can easily get tens of thousands of dollars
in credit cards within an hour right now), this is precisely how speculative
bubbles run out of control and crash the economy.

------
sabareesh
If any one interested in building your trading bot here is open api spec for
robinhood.
[https://github.com/sabareeshkkanan/robinhood](https://github.com/sabareeshkkanan/robinhood)

~~~
chirau
You should put better documentation. It's useless without instruction

~~~
verdverm
I found it useful, it's a good start. Perhaps if you had more context about
the toolset you would not find the lack of documentation the thing to comment
on. Also, there are better ways to engage in communication than leading with
negativity.

~~~
chirau
Where's the negativity?

------
canistr
So who is responsible for Robinhood's orderbook? Are they partnering with an
existing exchange to fulfill market/limit orders? Are they simply paying for
the trading fees on behalf of users?

If Robinhood isn't posting their orderbook, why would anyone trust that there
are no fees or commissions when they could bake their costs directly into the
price? There's no market regulation (a la Reg NMS) for cryptocurrencies, so
who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing
Robinhood to take their cut?

But if they are partnering with an exchange, why pick one over the other? Who
will pay for the withdrawal/transaction fees?

~~~
banterfoil
> so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing
> Robinhood to take their cut?

Are you referring to market orders? I don't understand this. If I place a
limit order for 1 share at $20. And the order gets filled at this price; where
do you think Robinhood is taking a cut? I think the strategy you mention could
be possible with market orders however.

~~~
canistr
Well for one, cryptocurrencies (at their current prices) can be divided much
greater than simply "1 share". I'm saying that the price that Robinhood sets
is dependent on orderbook price which they control.

Example: you buy $20 USD worth of BTC on Robinhood. They give you 0.001750
BTC.

But on other exchanges, you would have received 0.001812 BTC instead. The
differing price of BTC between exchanges gives them their "commission/fee".

The lack of transparency in pricing gives them the advantage in exchange for
retail consumer confusion over "zero fees".

------
polskibus
Facebook messenger doesn't let me share that url to friends. What the hell.

~~~
aphextron
Why would you ever want to visit a website that Zuckerberg doesn't approve of?

Dump that evil spyware, and tell your friends to as well.

------
lewisflude
Is there a UK equivalent for Robinhood? Would be extremely keen to give it a
go.

~~~
Radle
Bux? Allows trading a bunch of European and US CFDs. Also allows buying CFDs
on Bitcoin. Unfortunately not on any other cryp currencies.

------
pixie_
Wooo this is awesome! Robinhood gets it :) I already use Robinhood for
trading, so this would be a one stop shop. Plus the fact that it integrates
with TurboTax means there's zero work to pay taxes on trades. Keeping track of
the taxes is my biggest hassle trading crypto.

Hey Robinhood if you're reading I'd like

BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR, DOGE, XRP, XLM, XEM

~~~
beeskneecaps
GRLC!

------
pdude444
This is amazing! I have been following robinhood for years, can’t wait to move
my bitcoin away from coinbase

~~~
lettergram
I'd put money on their backend being something such as CoinBase...

~~~
dahdum
They are listing like 16 coins/tokens, so it has to be more than just
Coinbase/GDAX.

~~~
vthallam
They are launching tracking options for 16 coins and actual trading only for
Bitcoin and Ethereum. So it might be a while before you see all 16 on
Robinhood.

~~~
dahdum
Oh my bad...misread that then. Probably GDAX in that case, now that Coinbase
is offering custodial services I wonder if they aren't just using that.

------
dig1
Unrelated to cryptocurrencies, did Robinhood ever managed to roll ability to
trade US stocks outside US? From this [1] (almost tree years ago), looks like
they started with Australia, but that is it.

Anyone can suggest sane brokerage with API access allowing trading US stocks,
ETFs or options for non-US citizens, with minimal deposit? I'm aware of
Ameritrade; how about other alternatives?

[1]
[http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2015/5/4/onward](http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2015/5/4/onward)

------
cal5k
My assumption here is that by "no-commissions" they mean that they're only
making the bid/ask spread on transactions as a market maker?

~~~
paulgb
I don't think they are making the market themselves, but my understanding is
they are paid for order flow from those who do. I can only imagine the data is
worth quite a bit too, assuming their EULA allows them to sell it.

~~~
cal5k
Ah interesting. So they can't front-run their own clients, but they can sell
the data to others who will? ;-)

------
thisisit
It will be interesting to see if Robinhood understands this market completely.

For one, Coinbase has a lot of trouble with KYC and fake accounts. Now they
have to come up with innovative ways to stop it.

Two, this market can be very demanding. Stuff like delayed payments etc are
instantly noticed.

------
mcabs
It will be interesting to see how they allow people to fund their accounts.
With their traditional investments, they have to follow tradional rules with
respect to credit. But a more "accessible" and leveraged model like Coinbase,
would be a stark departure from their normal modes of operation.

------
sgwealti
How are they transferring the BTC to your wallet without paying the
network/mining/transaction fees?

~~~
twostorytower
My guess is if you want to withdraw it off Robinhood you'll have to pay a
standard network fee (Robinhood isn't taking a cut of that). They don't charge
fees for trading, though.

------
CodeSheikh
Nice TRON-esque theme. TRON as in the classic arcade game/movie not the TRON
crypto currency.

~~~
reificator
I didn't even know that was a distinction that now had to be made.

~~~
Kiro
I actually thought it was referring to TRON the cryptocurrency before reading
the whole comment so there's that.

------
cwperkins
Does anyone know what happens in the event that a brokerage like robinhood
fails? Are the assets insured by a federal agency or is it wiser to switch my
portfolio to another broker?

~~~
013a
All of the assets you have in Robinhood aren't actually held by Robinhood;
they're held by Apex, which is a huge firm that many companies use. If
Robinhood goes down, your assets are still with them and there'd be some
reasonable way to transfer them to another brokerage.

If Apex goes down, which is vastly more unlikely, Federal SIPC insurance kicks
in up to $500,000.

~~~
sjbase
Exactly true for stocks, but I don't think Apex or any equities clearinghouse
is clearing cryptocurrencies (exception: clearport for CME futures). So we're
left guessing as to whose balance sheet holds the crypto assets.

------
kaycebasques
(Pure speculation warning) I was wondering why they were taking so long to put
out their options trading and web UI. I wonder if this had something to do
with it.

~~~
aaronarduino
Hopefully, this isn't a sign that Robinhood is going downhill. I really enjoy
the "zero fee" stock trading.

------
aarontait
Anybody know if you're able to transfer your cryptocurrency on Coinbase to
Robinhood? In theory, I could avoid Coinbase's fees for selling.

~~~
twodave
You already can. Just move that stuff over to GDAX (also owned by Coinbase,
and free to transfer over) and place a limit sell order.

------
TaylorGood
Well, just hours after receiving an email from Robinhood for early access the
waiting list was already 255k people. Join the line!

------
dom96
Andddd still not available in the UK. Exactly as it was the last time I looked
into Robinhood (probably around a year ago).

------
WhiteOwlLion
Coinbase 1 billion revenue in 2017 is going to dive in 2018 with Robinhood
offering something better.

------
justboxing
"Corner the market, then raise the price. Simple economics" \- Walter White
#breakingbad

------
juba08
does anyone know what is their revenue model? i found this in wikipedia: "The
company makes money from interest earned on customers' cash balances and
margin lending."

is that possible in cyrpto currency?

------
thepra
It's not available for my country, Italy... Just why?

------
thisisit
Wasn't there a crypto robinhood called cobinhood already?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119362)

~~~
badmadrad
Its based in Asia and its shady. So Robinhood is much needed.

------
JustAnotherPat
BULLISH

------
loup-vaillant
The web page reads: "Invest in Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies".

Can someone change the title to better match the web page? "Crypto" is a bit
confusing without "currency".

~~~
nxsynonym
The domain is crypto.robinhood.com and the website title is "Robinhood
Crypto".

Title is perfectly accurate.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I was expecting a new cryptographic library and/or algorithm, and was looking
forward to 33 highly technical comments about how it compared to ECDSA or
something.

I suppose I should've known better.

~~~
nxsynonym
Yeah not saying it's a good choice on their part as it helps perpetuate the
conflation between crypto and crypt-currency.

Unfortunately this will be another case of literally/figuratively.

------
brndnmtthws
Has anyone else noticed that there is no documentation about withdrawing
funds? It looks like you can only buy and hold within the app.

Seems a bit pointless unless you're strictly interested in day trading and
don't actually care about crypto.

If this is true, that means these are cash settled and they might not actually
be backed by any assets. That idea is scary and I would avoid it.

------
rublev
Buy incrementally, hold. If all markets are tanking, cash to USD, wait for the
blood bath to be over. Otherwise you are gambling.

Accessible crypto is going to be a disaster simply because of unregulated
markets. My friends get shakey when they lose $100 in the market, this is
going to be "Weak Hands: The App". Or "Taking Candy From A Baby: The App".

I had to lose ~$200k over the course of a couple months and only after then I
started really getting into the swing of things and started making good money
while also making it back. It took all that to realize that if I _didn 't_ day
trade my yields would have been much much higher. Day trading is hard, don't
do it unless you really truly know what you're doing. Reading crap about
market psychology and fractals and fibonacci this and wave theory that is all
trash and does not make you a trader.

Here come the 'I lost my life savings' rants by people with weak hands.
Regular people + unregulated market = blood bath.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
>Reading crap about market psychology and fractals and fibonacci this and wave
theory that is all trash and does not make you a trader.

 _reads crap about Tether propping up bitcoin price, without audits despite
claims of USDT backed by USD_

 _immediately realize you 're regular people and invest nothing in
cryptocurrencies_

------
orev
“

~~~
krapp
It can be short for either. Don't be a language prescriptivist, it's a fight
you can't win.

------
lettergram
If anyone is interested, my company is working on an investment advisor for
cryptocurrencies (and stocks):

[https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/)

It works _very well_ for short-term trading on cryptocurrencies, still waiting
to release the longer term strategy (buy and hold is honestly a great choice).
We've just started revewing some of the results (since we launched last week),
and we're already up stagaring amounts:

[https://blog.projectpiglet.com/2018/01/30-weekly-returns-
usi...](https://blog.projectpiglet.com/2018/01/30-weekly-returns-using-
piglet/)

Not to say it'll always be that way...

~~~
dylanha
Anyone trading with a rangebound bot will have made money in the last two
weeks with these stagnant prices. The heavy regret for me set in later when my
rangebound bot sold Litecoin and Ethereum before they tripled.

~~~
lettergram
Use the code: pigletbeta3 for 6 months free access, provided you give feedback
at least once a month.

It doesn't have that same issue you describe.

~~~
googletazer
Cool, I'll check it out

~~~
lettergram
Note: It is in Beta, and we have limited data. Thus, expect a work in
progress.

Right now we need funds to continue development and add more data. So we will
be charging if you don't provide feedback - so please help us improve! :)

