Robinhood, a stock-buying app popular with young investors, declared on thursday it has added two new cryptocurrency offerings: Bitcoin cash and Litecoin.
The additions, that represent the fourth and sixth most beneficial digital currencies respectively, come back after Robinhood began providing Bitcoin and Ethereum—the two biggest and best well-known currencies—in February.
Currently, Robinhood is providing the cryptocurrencies in a restricted number of states, as well as california and texas, whereas it navigates licensing requirements in the rest of the country.
Robinhood’s call to add Litecoin and Bitcoin cash isn't surprising as the currencies come with little regulative risk, based on recent guidance from the SEC. This is not the case with alternative more centralized digital tokens, that the agency has warned are akin to securities that must be registered.
Robinhood says it’s service offers users the flexibility to track the value of different cryptocurrencies, together with XRP and Monero, and that the company could offer some of these for sale in the future.
The price of Litecoin and Bitcoin cash, like different cryptocurrencies, are well off their highs from last Dec when the overall market went into a mania.
While a growing range of companies offer cryptocurrency, including market leader Coinbase and payment service Square, Robinhood’s service is distinct as a result of the company doesn’t charge direct commissions or trading fees. As Fortune explained in June:
"With a dearth of market makers in the nascent cryptocurrency industry, Square and other trading platforms like Robinhood typically buy their Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies straight from public crypto exchanges and then resell them to investors, hoping to profit on the spread, or difference, between the purchase and sale price. But that can be tricky, especially when cryptocurrency’s high volatility results in frequent price swings."
At the time, Robinhood’s co-founder told Fortune that the company isn't concerned at the moment about creating money on crypto. Instead, the company sees it as a complement to its core stock brokerage service, which has already notched a lot of accounts than conventional services like eTrade.
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