Robinhood Acquires Cove Markets to Enhance Crypto Trading Offerings

UTC by Tolu Ajiboye · 3 min read
Robinhood Acquires Cove Markets to Enhance Crypto Trading Offerings
Photo: Unsplash

Robinhood says Cove Markets brings a wealth of experience in cross-exchange crypto trading and is partnering to ramp up order routing.

American financial services platform Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) announced on Tuesday in a blog post that it has acquired Cove Markets, a cross-exchange trading platform. According to Robinhood, this acquisition makes it easier for customers to manage their crypto accounts.

The terms of the deal were not made public. However, the Cove Markets team – including co-founders Scott Knudsen and Victoria Glava – will become part of Robinhood’s crypto team. Chief operating officer of Robinhood Crypto Christine Brown had this to say about the development:

“The Cove Markets team’s wealth of experience in trading execution and crypto market infrastructure will help us to build more powerful trading capabilities, bringing the benefits of better competition in the crypto markets to our customers.”

Also, Scott Knudsen, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Cove Markets also weighed in on the recent acquisition saying:

“We started Cove Markets three years ago to help crypto investors get the most out of their trading experience. Now, we are excited to join Robinhood to help build a world-class platform that can improve trading for millions of customers.”

The collaborative effort between both trading platforms looks to ramp up the volume of order routing and execution on Robinhood. It also seeks to make crypto investing simpler and at a comparatively lower cost.

Robinhood Has Become More Crypto-Oriented

In recent years, Robinhood has increased its focus on the burgeoning crypto industry, launching Robinhood Crypto in 2018. This comes amid increased mainstream acceptance of digital currencies – particularly in the institutional finance space. For instance, Robinhood also recently announced a partnership with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis ahead of the former’s planned crypto wallet launch. Furthermore, Chainalysis will provide the requisite data and tools for the rollout of the crypto wallet early next year. According to Robinhood, the total number of people on the waitlist for this initiative is currently 1.6 million.

The Robinhood acquisition represents the first for its crypto arm. In addition, it follows the financial services platform’s $140 million cash buyout of venture-backed startup Say Technologies back in August. This was Robinhood’s first major purchase since its initial public offering (IPO) in July. Robinhood stock is currently trading at around $18.50 from an all-time high of approximately $70.

About Cove Markets & Robinhood

Cove Markets Inc, founded in 2018, is an API platform that affords customers the ability to manage accounts across several centralized exchange platforms. In addition, it also assists users in managing aggregate financial data. The Cove Markets platform supports more than 50 major digital currencies.

Cove traders trade these products which connect with as many as seven centralized exchanges. Some of these include notable crypto exchange platforms such as Coinbase Pro, Kraken, and Bitfinex.

Robinhood is a commission-free financial services platform that facilitates the trading of multiple products including stocks, exchange-traded funds and crypto. Traders and investors undertake these via a mobile app. Even though Robinhood offers crypto price movements on its brokerage app, users cannot deposit or withdraw crypto off-platform. The platform currently has 31 million active users.

Business News, Cryptocurrency News, Deals News, News
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