Robinhood is finally testing Bitcoin and crypto withdrawals, as well as a new digital hot wallet, the firm announced on its blog Wednesday. Robinhood also opened a waitlist where users could sign up to test out the forthcoming wallets
The update comes after the past year of broad criticism of Robinhood for, among other things, not allowing users to control their own Bitcoin private keys. The firm repeatedly hinted at enabling such features over the last year without delivering any evidence that such products were being developed.
It remains unclear whether Bitcoin will be one of the "supported cryptocurrencies" the platform enables the deposits and withdrawals for. One can only hope. Although the firm's inability to distinguish between Bitcoin and other crypto makes it unclear where their priorities lie with these features. Doge coin would be a more likely bet, as the joke crypto recently generated $144 million for the company, according to Barron's[1].
Robinhood’s announcement of the new hot wallet and Bitcoin and crypto transfer features comes after a mounting demand by customers. Bloomberg reported that evidence of such features has appeared in a beta version of the trading platform's iPhone app. Rather than providing photos or other evidence of such features, Bloomberg stated that “The software includes a hidden image portraying a waitlist page” for users to sign up, and attributed the discovery of said features to software developer Steve Moser. The waitlist page is active today.
Currently Robinhood offers Bitcoin strike price exposure through their platform, but without the ability to withdraw, customers are duped into thinking they are holding Bitcoin proper, as in the hard store of value property, when in fact they are holding a security, a second layer of Bitcoin which marks its price, but lacks
