Robinhood is seeing ‘a lot of engagement’ from retail users

Robinhood is expanding its European offerings, allowing customers to transfer crypto in and out of its app. 

Robinhood’s Johann Kerbrat told Blockworks that the company will continue to roll out new features. He added that right now Robinhood is limiting its marketing to a few countries over in the EU as it awaits its MiCA license. 

Once Robinhood has that in hand, the company plans to scale all “across the EU.”

The reason for Robinhood’s EU focus is simple, Kerbrat explained. 

“You have a lot more companies in the EU working on crypto than in the US. We have a bit more of a clear framework, and so we are able to launch the product…in a fast way, because we know how to adapt to the regulatory framework, and because we’re getting this constant feedback loop from customers, we’re able to…add what’s missing or what they are looking for,” he said.

Read more: The UK is at a turning point in crypto regulation, policymakers say 

Unfortunately, to no one’s surprise, the US market isn’t so easy. Obviously there isn’t a crypto license that’ll allow Robinhood to safely offer the same types of features to US residents. And then there’s the pesky matter of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Wells Notice. 

Kerbrat said the company hasn’t heard anything back from the SEC “at this point.” 

“We were disappointed. I think we’ve been really focusing on establishing a safe business. We didn’t list a ton of assets like some of our competitors. We never offered staking in the US. So, you know, we’ve felt like we’ve done our work to work with the SEC and get to a good position, but we were obviously disappointed with the Wells notice,” Kerbrat said. 

It’s unclear, at this stage, what the SEC is planning. The regulatory agency had a spree of crypto-related enforcement actions last month to round out its fiscal year.

In May we wrote that, based on how the SEC has approached other lawsuits, it was likely that it would file its lawsuits (if it chooses to do so, because Wells notices don’t always mean that a lawsuit is incoming) last summer. And it did…with Consensys, after the company received a Wells notice last spring. But we haven’t seen actual lawsuits against either Robinhood or Uniswap yet.

But despite the will they or won’t they situation playing out with the SEC, Kerbrat says nothing’s really changed for Robinhood when it comes to its US business. 

Read more: Crypto needs ‘to work closely with the regulators:’ Gemini deputy general counsel

Though, he noted, they’re not super focused on adding more assets to the platform. 

“Our focus at this point is more about making sure that the features we have are working for our customers,” he noted. 

Robinhood, due to its customer base, is a good gauge of how the retail crowd is doing. 

“I think we still see a lot of engagement off-chain and onchain. And I think the onchain part is important because it really shows that people are not just buying the crypto somewhere and holding it there, but we actually see them transacting and using a self-custody wallet, engaging with steps and all these kinds of things. So we haven’t seen too much of that changing. We do see volume cycling, and that’s something that we are used to. We see it almost every year,” he said.

Kerbrat also addressed the stablecoin rumors. While he noted that stablecoins are a “very interesting business,” he clarified that “at this point we don’t have anything that we are preparing.” 

A modified version of this article first appeared in the daily Empire newsletter. Subscribe here so you don’t miss tomorrow’s edition.

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