Leading commission-free trading app Robinhood has expanded its crypto offering by adding Stellar [XLM] and Avalanche [AVAX], per a recent announcement. The trading platform’s recent addition is a welcome change to its earlier conservative listing policy toward crypto assets.
A few months back, it added support of Solana [SOL], Shiba Inu [SHIB], and Polygon [MATIC]. followed by Chainlink [LINK] in late June.
Beginning its foray into the crypto space in February 2018, Robinhood initially allowed its users to trade Bitcoin and a small selection of altcoins. Notably, BTC still accounted for over a third of the firm’s crypto-related revenue during the heights of the meme coin frenzy in the first quarter of 2021.
It gained a lot of attention when the world’s acclaimed meme coin Doge went live in July 2018. Following that it refrained from adding any more crypto tokens for almost three years at a time of massive growth in the crypto industry.
Earlier this year, the California-based firm started releasing crypto wallets, enabling users to withdraw crypto from exchanges.
But that could not alleviate the firm’s woes as in late June, shares of Robinhood took a hit due to shrinking revenue and a decline in active users. There were also reports of a possible acquisition by FTX which was denied by the firm.
Robinhood Embroiled In Legal Battles
On top of that, it recently reduced its staff by 23% amidst revenue falling to nearly halved in the second quarter of 2022.
In addition to that, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been investigating the company’s compliance with short-selling rules since October 2021, as per a recent filing.
It also received requests from the SEC in Q2 seeking information related to the firm‘s compliance with trade reporting requirements concerning securities and fractional share lending.
This week, the trading platform’s crypto wing was fined $30 million by the New York State Department of Financial Services, in violation of anti-money-laundering and cybersecurity rules.
In 2020, the agency awarded a penalty of $65 million for misleading its customers about a key source of revenue, called payment for order flow which the firm didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing.