Robinhood, a US-based stock trading app has announced that it has added two new digital currencies to its trading platform. In an announcement on Thursday, the company said that Robinhood Crypto users could now trade bitcoin cash and litecoin.
Responding to growing demand
The company said it took the move so as to address a growing demand among customers for assets beyond Ethereum and bitcoin, which are the only options on many markets.
Robinhood also announced that it has more than 5 million users on its platform. The user base has significantly grown after the company expanded its services to 17 states in the U.S. This growth has been recorded despite the cryptocurrency market being highly volatile and unpredictable.
In May, the company ran a Series D funding around in which it raised $363 million. The funds, the company said, were to be used to expand its trading pairs and move to more markets in the U.S.
Since February, Robinhood has been offering trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum only. The company has however been making several attempts to increase its offerings.
According to data from Coins.Online, currently Bitcoin Cash ranks in the fourth position with a market cap of $11.7 billion. This year alone, LTC and BCH have lost 64% and 72% of their value respectively. This drop reflects the decline in the crypto market which has lost 60% since the start of the year.
Recently, Baiju Bhatt, the co-CEO of Robinhood said that the company is working on offering its services throughout the U.S by the end of this year. This is part of its strategy to be among the leading cryptocurrency platforms. Initially, the company had operations in 10 states before moving to Texas, New Jersey, Indiana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Utah.
Offering banking services
Although the company does not offer several top digital currencies, it allows tracking of 16 among them Ripple’s XRP, XMR and NEO. Currently reports emerged that Robinhood has initiated talks with regulators to start offering banking services to its users. There have been several attempts to reconcile both the cryptocurrency and financial sectors. Several representative companies from both sides have put in place mechanisms that allow them to tap into selected services from each other.
