Robinhood is already widely known as one of the top startups in Silicon Valley by all means. The commission-free exchange became widely popular with American youths who have passion for markets and little money to invest. So far so good. Now, just after Robinhood entered the cryptocurrency game, can the startup steal the show from one of the biggest and most trustworthy exchanges, Coinbase?
According to Investopedia, Robinhood is currently valued at around $6 billion, and is the second most highly valued fintech startups in the United States, second after Stripe.
There are several factors to consider when comparing Robinhood with Coinbase and the former’s potentiality to be better in the future. Robinhood just recently got into the cryptocurrency game, and is already gathering a lot of interest from users and investors (the latest investors include Sequoia Capital). The free trading app was previously developed only for mobile, and now is already user-friendly for web.
Second, both Robinhood and Coinbase have user-friendly interfaces, and are easy to use. While Robinhood has only several cryptocurrency offerings for its user base, the company is slowly rolling out services to more and more states such as New Mexico and Colorado. Previously, the service was only accessible to California, Montana, New Hampshire and Missouri. By the end of the year, Robinhood expects to cover all US states after it clears out licensing issues.
One of the co-founders, Baiju Bhatt, commented that the three major reasons why Robinhood has the potential to be of greater value to users than large exchanges such as Coinbase are: no fees when trading with cryptocurrencies, more and more coins offered and potential better experience and quality of products.
Another very major advantage that Robinhood currently has, and Coinbase does not is the “friendship” of the SEC. Robinhood is in fact a registered broker-dealer and Coinbase is still not. The ability of Robinhood to negotiate and follow stricter rule sin the world of finance may prove very strategic and beneficial for the company in the long-run, especially in the hot cryptocurrency arena, where each and every day there are regulatory issues and “watchdogs”.