RE: Finally Robinhood Crypto Wallets Are Here!
(Edited)
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I would handle Robinhood with great care, or more like a plutonium core... Well, honestly, I would just stay far away given their beyond shady history, and exploitative behaviour such as front-running their users being built into the system (reason for the "zero fee"). That being said, I have no idea about how their crypto solution is working, but I assume they're up to no good.
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I have heard about them making money by selling the order flows. However, when the prices were compared to other platforms where stocks and cryptos are bought, Robinhood did have a competitive edge and did offer better prices.
Something like 75% of Robinhoods revenue comes from selling your order data to wall street insiders (market makers) before they place the order. In effect this means that you're the product, not the customer, just as you are for FB (or Meta, I guess) – but here you also trust them with your financial assets. I would not expect them to ever have my best interests in mind (a fun fact is that this PFOF model was pioneered by Bernard Madoff). Well, as a European I don't really have access to them anyways, as their practices are considered illegal here.
The duplicitous messaging just raises even more red flags for me – framing themselves as the "good guys", while having a history of being anything but transparent about their practices, seems borderline fraudulent.
When it comes to what prices you actually get for market orders compared to other platforms, after your orders have been routed, seems extremely hard to compare – as Robinhood outright refuses to disclose its trading statistics using the same metrics as the rest of the industry. Probably most of your money never goes to an exchange at all, but just float around in dark pools. Likely your money never end up on an exchange at all, but is shuffled around in dark markets and secondary sale.
In general I would expect to lose out big on price improvement, compared to platforms that aren't dependent on selling the order flow, and limit order data and leveraged positions are potentially even more easily exploited by the market makers.