Robinhood plans to bolster its cryptocurrency staff this year amid an explosion of interest in the digital currency trade, CEO Vlad Tenev said.
The popular investment app has been hiring “a ton” of new staff as it works to deploy more cryptocurrency offerings, including the ability to transfer cryptocurrency assets to a user’s digital wallet, according to Tenev.
“We’re actually growing our cryptography team tremendously this year,” Tenev said during a virtual “fire chat” that Robinhood posted on YouTube on Thursday. “The business has just experienced exponential growth. This year we have reached a turning point.
Tenev did not say exactly how many workers will add Robinhood to his cryptography team, but said the launch would be able to expand the operation more quickly when there are “hundreds of people” on board.
Robinhood’s cryptocurrency business has grown this year as bitcoin prices have skyrocketed and a growing number of major companies like Tesla and Square have added it to their balance sheets.
More than 6 million new customers traded cryptocurrency for the first time in 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 across the platform, a much-sought-after feature, Tenev said.
Currently, users can only buy and sell cryptocurrency assets with cash in their Robinhood accounts. The company he says works in functions that allow them to transfer currencies between their brokerage accounts and their own digital wallets.
“As much as people are interested in this on social media, I’m bothering our cryptography team and our software engineers, so we’ll try to do that as soon as possible,” Tenev said.
But Tenev said his company wants to make sure the platform is reliable and that these new features are safe before launching them 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 its cryptographic footprint after picking up heat to block GameStop and other so-called meme stocks in January. Tenev has said Robinhood only did so after securing a $ 3 billion lawsuit from a Wall Street exchange center amid the unprecedented market frenzy.