Coinbase Has Cmpetition

Hey guys, I'm sure many of you have already heard this as it was big news yesterday, Robinhood the free stock trading app is going to be adding cryptocurrencies and competing with Coinbase.

What's really cool about this is Coinbase definitely needs some competition. Currently Coinbase has not activated Segwit, they are super slow to roll out new altcoins, their customer service is terrible, and their fees are high. This is because they have almost no competition so there's no incentive for them to make the service better.

Sure there's Gemini but typically the more competition the better and with Robinhood rolling out crypto what's kind of cool is the blending of Crypto and traditional assets like Mutual Funds, ETF's and stocks all on one platform. Apparently Robinhood had been surveying users and over 95% said they would be interested in using Robinhood to trade crypto.

This is going to roll out slowly, initially it's only going to be Bitcoin and Ethereum although other altcoins are being looked at to be added shortly after such as... Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ripple, Qtum, ZCash, Monero, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Stellar, Omisego, Bitcoin Gold, NEO, Lisk, and Dogecoin.

I always wonder how exchanges select the coins they do as they often aren't necessarily ones I'd like to see added but hey at least they are adding more and it's going be awesome to have another fiat to crypto and crypto to fiat gateway.

In addition to starting out with just a few coins it's only going to roll out to a few states initially as well. It's going to start with California, Massachusets, Missouri, Montana, and New Hampshire initially, but hopefully will be rolling out to more states shortly after.

I imagine this is partly to beta test and scale up the service, but probably due even more so to strict, complicated and inefficient government regulations. Exchanges need to be registered not only with the Federal Government as Money Services Businesses, but also individually with each state who all have their own rules, all of which require large liquid assets, bonds, and insurance, and all which have their own application processes to getting licensed in all states is a very long and very expensive process.

Even Coinbase who's been around for years still isn't available to residents of Hawaii so it is a long, costly and complicated process.

All in all however this is great news. Competition is typically good for markets, it will hopefully light a fire under Coinbase to make some much needed improvements in the areas of fees, customer service, segwit and adding new coins.

I just recently signed up for Robinhood, but curious to hear from those of you who are already users what has your experience been with them? Drop a comment below...

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