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A beta version of a crypto wallet is due to launch this month. The wallet will add important functionality to the existing Robinhood trading app, enabling users to be able to send and receive crypto, as well as the existing buy and sell functionality.
According to a Motley Fool Ascent article, the announcement of a wallet integration into its app was made by Robinhood back in September. Following the announcement a million users signed up on the waitlist within the first month. This has since grown to 1.6 million.
The wallet integration should be a very welcome addition for the Robinhood app users. The old adage of “Not your keys, not your crypto” is always mentioned by the more savvy users who recognise the danger of allowing a third party to custody your crypto.
However, there is the other side to the argument, where should a user custody their own crypto, then losing their password, or doing something to compromise security could lead to them losing all their assets.
Various crypto apps and exchanges have earned a reasonable level of trust in this respect, given their attention to security, and the expectation that they would make the customer whole, should anything happen that was proved to be a fault on their side.
Binance, and some of the larger exchanges might fall into this category, while Robinhood, Celsius, Voyager, and others, could probably be relied upon to make good if their security were compromised. However, hacks are unfortunately still commonplace, and the investor needs to be proactive.
Further advantages for a wallet integration would be that user risk would be massively minimised in the case of a hack. Also, should the exchange freeze a user’s account for whatever reason, they would be able to still use the wallet with no restrictions.
Finally, holding assets in a wallet would allow the user to take advantage of the many DeFi opportunities out there. Just connecting the wallet to a DeFi application would enable the user to stake any of their assets at will.
Robinhood has said that it has now finished the initial testing phase, and will soon open beta testing to some of its waitlist users. The company has said that it will implement a number of security measures for the wallet, and that it will concentrate on educating users on how to get the most benefit out of it.