State #29: Robinhood Brings Zero-Fee Crypto Trading to Illinois
Residents of the 6th most populous U.S. state, Illinois, can now access the cryptocurrency trading services of Robinhood.
In a tweeted statement, the trading app disclosed that Robinhood Crypto was now available in the prairie state, making it the 29th state in the U.S. to get the commission-free round-the-clock trading service.
As the financial services startup promised earlier in the year, it has been rolling out the crypto trading features across the U.S. gradually. While Illinois is the only state to get Robinhood Crypto this month so far, the trading app launched in two states last month – North Dakota and South Dakota.
Relatively speaking October was busier with the app launching cryptocurrency trading services in Rhode Island, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Wyoming. Additionally, Robinhood Crypto also became available in Ohio, marking the halfway milestone in its coverage of all the states in the Union, as CCN.com reported.
Six Tradeable Cryptocurrencies
Though the pace of the geographical rollout has been at a steady pace, the same cannot be said of the cryptocurrency assets that have been made available for trading so far. Initially, Robinhood Crypto only allowed the trading of bitcoin and ether but has only added four more almost one year later – litecoin, bitcoin cash, dogecoin, and ethereum classic.
The most recent tradeable digital asset to be added on Robinhood Crypto was ethereum classic, and that was back in August, as CCN.com reported.
Despite the relative scarcity of tradeable digital assets on the app, users can still add 16 cryptocurrencies to a watch list and access market data, news, and price alerts on the same. The “watchlist” cryptocurrencies include ripple (XRP), zcash, monero, dash, stellar, qtum, bitcoin gold, omisego, NEO, and lisk.
Rapid Growth
The receipt of a money transmitter license in Illinois comes at a time when the trading app has been beefing up its executive suite. Towards the end of last month, the trading startup hired two executives from established tech giants, Amazon and Google. Gretchen Howard, an alumna of Google, joined Robinhood as the vice president of operations, while Jason Warnick, an alumnus of Amazon, was hired as the startup’s chief financial officer.
Howard’s appointment, in particular, was notable because it signaled that the startup is ready to embark on the next level of growth, as indicated in the responsibilities of her new role:
“Gretchen will oversee various operational functions that are critical to growing our business, including customer support. Her expertise in scaling operations will help us accelerate our product and business growth even faster,” a blog post read late last month.
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