Robinhood is planning to reinforce his cryptocurrency team this year amid an explosion of interest in the digital currency trade, said CEO Vlad Tenev.
The popular investment app has hired “a ton” of new employees as it works to launch more cryptocurrency offerings – including the ability to move crypto assets to and from the user’s digital wallet, according to Tenev.
“In fact, we are increasing our cryptographic team enormously this year,” said Tenev during a virtual “fireplace chat” that Robinhood posted on YouTube on Thursday. “The business has just undergone exponential growth. We really reached an inflection point this year. “
Tenev did not say exactly how many workers Robinhood will add to his crypto team, but said the startup would be able to expand the operation more quickly when it has “hundreds of people” on board.
Robinhood’s crypto business has grown a lot this year, as bitcoin prices have skyrocketed and an increasing number of big companies like Tesla and Square have included it in their balance sheets.
More than 6 million new customers traded cryptocurrency for the first time at Robinhood from the beginning of the year until mid-February, according to Tenev.
One of the cryptography team’s top priorities is to allow Robinhood traders to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies through the platform – a feature that is in high demand, said Tenev.
Currently, users can only buy and sell cryptographic assets with cash in their Robinhood accounts. The company it says is working on features that would allow the transfer of currencies between its brokerage accounts and its own digital wallets.
“As much as people are bothering me about it on social media, I am bothering our cryptography team and our software engineers, so we will try to do that as soon as possible,” said Tenev.
But Tenev said his company wants to make sure that the platform is reliable and that these new features are safe before they are released to users. He noted that many traders do not want to deal with the “very complicated” task of managing digital currencies themselves.
Robinhood is expanding his cryptographic footprint after picking up heat for blocking GameStop negotiations and other actions called memes in January. Tenev said Robinhood only did this after receiving a $ 3 billion demand from a Wall Street clearinghouse amid unprecedented market frenzy.