- Robinhood COO mentioned 1.6 million individuals are on the corporate’s waitlist for withdrawing bitcoin.
- The long-awaited function would come as a cryptocurrency pockets to the agency’s buying and selling app.
- It’s nonetheless unclear when clients will be capable of take possession of their bitcoin.
Robinhood now has 1.6 million individuals on the waitlist for its bitcoin and cryptocurrency pockets, its COO Christine Brown mentioned on Tuesday, per a Reuters report. Amongst different properties, the pockets, to be added to its app, contains the important function of withdrawing bitcoin right into a self-sovereign pockets of alternative, one thing the dealer at present would not supply in its buying and selling platform.
The way in which the Robinhood buying and selling app at present works, customers purchase and promote representations of BTC and some other cryptocurrency as a substitute of the bitcoin itself — successfully an IOU. A buyer can solely make certain they’ve bitcoin as soon as they switch it to a pockets for which they management the non-public key.
Robinhood opened the waitlist for the withdrawing function in September after repeatedly hinting that it could allow such options over the previous yr. Since its launch, the waitlist has gathered a lot curiosity, exhibiting clients’ want to take possession of their bitcoin.
When proof of the function appeared, Robinhood CEO informed Bloomberg that “the flexibility to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies is difficult to do with scale, and we need to be sure it is accomplished appropriately and correctly,” hinting that it would not be a fast one to implement.
Nonetheless, bitcoin withdrawals must be on the prime of any service supplier’s precedence record for the easy undeniable fact that with out such a function, customers aren’t participating within the Bitcoin community in any respect. Certainly, working a node is the best-case situation, however utilizing a self-custody wallet is the naked minimal — not your keys, not your coins.
