You Can Now Trade Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash on Robinhood Crypto

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/12/you-can-now-trade-litecoin-and-bitcoin-cash-on-robinhood-crypto/

by sahin • 8 years ago

85 34 8 years ago

techcrunch.com

justboxing• 8 years ago

Obligatory RobinHood Tweet [2016]:

"Trade fast, die young." https://twitter.com/robinhoodapp/status/756262680537759744

212• 8 years ago

I feel that at some point regulators will move on RobinHood for the way they push trading.

tedunangst3• 8 years ago

Why? Brokerages like etrade have pushed trading for decades.

Zaskoda• 8 years ago

Hooray Litecoin...

ram_rar• 8 years ago

Kudos to the product guys. They have figured out the demographic of their product with clinical precision. In Last 6 months, I have used RH app lot more than FB. Nothing is as addictive as using leverage to trade options and Crypto.

sushid2• 8 years ago

I have no comment on crypto but if you're "addictively" using leverage to trade options, I hope you're only playing with your throwaway money. You are practically bound to lose money to institutional investors when playing with options.

1996• 8 years ago

Agreed. I would urge caution, even if I am "pro crypto"

Only play with money you can afford to lose without even a sad face

opportune• 8 years ago

I’d argue that if you’re playing with options on industries or companies you know well (not your employer though) you may even have an edge over institutional investors. Unfortunately it’s not possible to buy calls on pre-IPO companies though

a13n• 8 years ago

You are practically bound to lose money to institutional investors when playing with options.

Source? Explanation?

hbcondo714• 8 years ago

I signed up for Robinhood earlier this year and provided all my personal info including SSN but was notified afterwards that cryptos were not available for trading in California.

siavosh• 8 years ago

Every time I hear "democratize" financial system from a FinTech or blockchain "company" it immediately raises alarm bells. Usually it's a euphemism for democratizing investor exploitation.

anoncoward1112• 8 years ago

Nobody invests, specifically in these coins. Everyone speculates, even in bonds :)

erubin• 8 years ago

there is a fundamental difference between securities which have a claim on real assets and produce cashflows and those that don't

throwawayqdhd• 8 years ago

The idea that venture-backed startups are going to "democratize" finance and wretch it from the hands of big banks is ridiculous.

curiousgal• 8 years ago

Obligatory warning: don't trade more than you can afford to lose.

I can't see how making leveraged trading accessible to the large masses is beneficial to anyone other than the app makers and institutional investors.

dawhizkid3• 8 years ago

Said it once before: do not link your bank account on RH with Plaid (i.e. bank login). Plaid is the API they use that includes access to your account balance and entire transaction history! (https://plaid.com/products/transactions/)

RH Privacy Policy: https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal...

dionidium• 8 years ago

Anybody worried about this should probably just open a checking account specifically for uses like this. We tend to talk about "your checking" account, as though you can only have one and it's somehow your official account. But, despite these weird notions we seem to have about them, checking accounts are just like any other consumer product.

You can have as many as you want with as many banks as you want; they've very easy to open online.

This shouldn't be a significant barrier for anybody on this forum.

andrestan• 8 years ago

Wow! I didn't realize that! Thanks for telling me. Very unfortunate given how much I value the service :(

whockey• 8 years ago

Hey! Co-founder of Plaid (plaid.com) here. RH does not pull your transaction history, RH is only using Plaid to authenticate your ACH accounts to make sure your actually the owner of the account and so you don't get over-drafted. They're using our auth and balance product, feel free to check out what information we return on our docs (http://plaid.com/docs).

throwaway37585• 8 years ago

Nitpick: you’re → your.

beaner• 8 years ago

But they could potentially use you for more and users don't have insight into whether or not they do or if it will change.

krustyburger• 8 years ago

Even the account balance is information they would not normally have and something most people consider personal and private.

BallinBige• 8 years ago

that is scary!

mehrdadn• 8 years ago

I don't see what's specific to Plaid here. When you give your bank login information, that means they can see whatever is accessible via that login. You should always expect this no matter whom you're giving your login information to, or why.

dawhizkid3• 8 years ago

Obviously if you are using a Mint-like application where it's clear you are sharing your transaction history then it should be expected, but on RH there is no obvious utility to sharing transaction data when linking a bank account only serves to transfer money in and out of a brokerage account.

As far as I can tell, a single Plaid token enables a developer to "turn on" any endpoint they offer without consent from the user, so even if RH does not pull transaction history now (I would like confirmation from them directly) they've obviously written their PP in a way that lets them flip a switch anytime they want without anyone knowing.

Plaid is an interesting company from a developer POV, but it's clear to me they've taken the early FB approach to their API and have extremely little control or visibility into what developers are doing with the data. They also do not show a confirmation screen with the data elements they're asking for from the customer before confirmation.

I hope they get their act together before we see them in the news because someone bought Plaid transaction data from millions of customers to target ads for the 2020 election. Purchase history on millions of voters would be incredibly powerful (even more so than likes IMO) as far as targeting goes.

ddtaylor• 8 years ago

I'm happy to see more adoption of Bitcoin Cash!

You Can Now Trade Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash on Robinhood Crypto

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