Robinhood Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick said he was aware of the demand for more cryptocurrencies to be added to the platform, but added that the company didn’t want to jump the gun, Bitcoin.com reported Sunday (Jan. 16).
Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s virtual CFO Network Summit last week, Warnick said that the company wants more clarity on the matter.
His words came in response to supporters of the shiba inu cryptocurrency petitioning for the brokerage company to list SHIB, which has garnered over 550,000 signatures.
“We’re a highly regulated company in a highly regulated industry, and we think it’s important that we get a bit more clarity from regulators,” Warnick said.
He said compliance was one of the biggest priorities for the company, with a partnership with Chainalysis, the blockchain data platform, only reinforcing that. According to Warnick, Robinhood also had no plans to buy crypto for its corporate treasury — a contrast from other companies like Microstrategy and Tesla.
“There aren’t compelling reasons strategically for our business to put any meaningful amount of our corporate cash into cryptocurrencies,” he said.
In November, Christine Brown, chief operating officer and vice president of product operations with Robinhood, said the platform wasn’t rushing to list more cryptocurrencies.
Currently, Robinhood supports buying, selling and real-time market data for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, bitcoin sv, dogecoin, ethereum, ethereum classic and litecoin.
Robinhood also rolled out a cryptocurrency gift program last December, as well as a beta launch of cryptocurrency wallets which now have waitlists of 1.6 million people.
Last fall, PYMNTS wrote that Robinhood’s legal chief, Dan Gallagher, doesn’t think crypto needs more regulations. He reportedly called it “one of the stupidest ideas [he’s] heard in a long time.”
Gallagher cited the Dodd-Frank financial reform, saying this proved more regulatory roles would only cause more harm rather than helping things.
He said Dodd-Frank had set out to limit the number of agencies and provide a clear jurisdiction, but ended up adding three new ones.
On the other hand, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler has said regulators’ harshness on cryptocurrency makes sense because of the “high levels of hype.”
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