Robinhood's Vlad Tenev talks crypto growth in 'fireside chat'

[NEW YORK] Robinhood is working to expand the capabilities of its crypto trading platform and repair the reputational damage it suffered in the wake of the retail trading frenzy over GameStop, the online brokerage's chief executive officer Vlad Tenev said in a video of what the company called a "fireside chat" posted on YouTube Thursday.

Sitting in front of virtual backdrop featuring a fireplace, Mr Tenev said the company has plans for growth in the crypto space and is working to ensure that an oft-requested "wallet" feature is safe before introducing it.

"As much as people are bugging me on that on social media, I'm bugging our crypto team and our software engineers. We're going to try and get that done as fast as possible. And we'll see. We might add some new coins along the way," he said in reply to selected questions from customers.

The company will hire a "tonne" of people for its crypto operation though its first priority is to make sure it can scale the service and handle the customers that are joining.

"One thing that we're probably not doing as great of a job communicating to customers is just how cost effective our offering is," Mr Tenev said. "If you trade on Coinbase, or some of these other, kind of smaller outfits, you're paying 1 per cent, 2 per cent, even more."

Mr Tenev also said it still may take a few more months for Robinhood to recover from the reputational hit it took earlier in the year after it restricted some stocks at the hight of the Reddit-fuelled frenzy of meme stock trading.

"We're doing as much as we can to get the true story out there," he said. "I think there is going to be some documentaries and some movies that will help blast it out to a wider audience."

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