Robinhood to launch cryptocurrency wallets as bitcoin becomes a bigger part of business

Robinhood to launch cryptocurrency wallets as bitcoin becomes a bigger part of business

Robinhood is debuting a feature that gives traders more control over digital tokens in its latest expansion in the cryptocurrency space. The newly public brokerage is testing "crypto wallets" with select clients next month, the company announced in a blog post Wednesday. The so-called wallet will allow investors to trade, send and receive digital currencies, as well as move them in and out of the app. Shares of Robinhood rose 5% on Wednesday. In recent months, some users — particularly Dogecoin traders — have taken to social media to complain that by using Robinhood as their broker, they had exposure to crypto prices but not actual ownership of the coins themselves. "We're not first to the market — we've been taking our time to make sure that we build this in a phased approach," Robinhood's chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada told CNBC in a phone interview. "We'll have a few customers come in, iterate on the product, get the customer feedback and then expand from there." Certain clients will begin testing the product and Robinhood will share their feedback over its blog and Twitter, said Chennapragada, who spent 12 years at Google leading product, engineering and design teams before Robinhood.