'It's Important That We Get a Bit More Clarity From Regulators'

Robinhood’s chief financial officer has revealed the popular trading platform’s crypto priority and the potential of listing more cryptocurrencies. “We’re a highly regulated company in a highly regulated industry, and we think it’s important that we get a bit more clarity from regulators,” he emphasized.

Robinhood Waiting for Regulatory Clarity

The chief financial officer (CFO) of Robinhood, Jason Warnick, talked about cryptocurrency during The Wall Street Journal’s virtual CFO Network Summit last week.

Commenting on retail investors’ high demand for Robinhood to list more cryptocurrencies, particularly the meme crypto shiba inu (SHIB), Warnick emphasized, “It’s not lost on us that our customers and others would like to see us add more coins.” However, the Robinhood executive stressed:

We’re a highly regulated company in a highly regulated industry, and we think it’s important that we get a bit more clarity from regulators.

Compliance is a top priority at Robinhood. In December last year, the company partnered with blockchain data platform Chainalysis to meet compliance requirements.

Supporters of the shiba inu cryptocurrency have been petitioning on Change.org for Robinhood to list SHIB. At the time of writing, 555,811 people have signed the petition.

Christine Brown, Robinhood Crypto’s chief operating officer and VP of Product Operations, said in November that the platform is in no hurry to list any additional cryptocurrencies. Her statement was in response to a question about when SHIB will be listed.

Robinhood Crypto currently supports the buying, selling, and real-time market data for bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin sv (BSV), dogecoin (DOGE), ethereum (ETH), ethereum classic (ETC), and litecoin (LTC).

Warnick also clarified at the summit that Robinhood will not be buying cryptocurrency for its corporate treasury like some companies have done, such as Microstrategy and Tesla. He explained:

There aren’t compelling reasons strategically for our business to put any meaningful amount of our corporate cash into cryptocurrencies.

In December last year, Robinhood launched a cryptocurrency gift program. The company also announced the upcoming beta launch of its cryptocurrency wallets, which has a waitlist of 1.6 million people.

What do you think about the Robinhood executive’s comments? Let us know in the comments section below.

Kevin Helms

A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.