Robinhood Initiates Beta Phase for Digital Wallets

Digital Wallet

With the cryptocurrency market growing at an exponential pace, it is not surprising that Robinhood has decided to further expand into the market. The crypto and stock trading app is now working on introducing a digital wallet feature, which is expected to be introduced at the start of 2022. In 2021, Robinhood has experienced a significant amount of growth after the exchange decided to list a popular meme token known as Dogecoin. Thanks to the influx in the trading volumes of DOGE, Robinhood was able to climb up the ranks to become one of the leading crypto exchanges in the market. 

On Wednesday, Robinhood released a blog post that showed that tens of thousands of users had been attracted to its waitlist for the trading app of the platform. As these users have signed up on the waitlist, they will be granted access to the beta version of their digital wallet from somewhere in the middle of January. The company further disclosed that the trading app has amassed almost 1.6 million people who are waiting for the launch of the new wallet. It will boast a wide range of features, which traders will be able to use for depositing and withdrawing Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies as well.

Back in September, the company had stirred up a lot of excitement in the crypto space when it unveiled a digital wallet for its clients. In the last few months, Robinhood has been testing its digital wallet feature. The company made an announcement on November 22nd in which it said that the initial alpha transfer had been finalized by using Dogecoin. Christine Brown, Robinhood’s Chief operating officer (COO) said that the purpose of the wallet’s beta launch was to ensure the security of the users and also give them education regarding crypto transactions, the network as well as gas fees. 

Robinhood further stated that even though people are saying that 2021 is the year in which crypto really became mainstream, the fact is that a lot of people are still not completely familiar with the asset class and are figuring out how to navigate the blockchain. The company said that by introducing the digital wallet, they are eager to play a prominent role in inviting a large number of investors to the crypto space for the first time. In recent weeks, the stock market hasn’t been doing so well, but Robinhood’s stock did not react to the announcement of the introduction of the digital wallet feature by the company.

The company had gone public in July 2021, but the performance of the stock has not been impressive in the last couple of months. The share price of Robinhood had reached a record high on August 4th, 2021 at $70.39, but it has dipped since then. At the time of writing, the share price was around $17.11, which is a major fall of about 70%. In addition, trading volumes of the exchange had also suffered after the hype surrounding Dogecoin died down somewhat, which led to a fall in revenues.