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Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

crypto.robinhood.com

191–200 of 317 posts

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#191
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is speculative, stocks are investments. Bitcoin is speculative. https://i.imgur.com/AltAcnB.jpg Keep in mind this graph is logarithmic in scale.

You think stocks are not speculative?

If I buy a lump of gold, and attempt to sell it to someone else later at a higher price, that is pure speculation. Gold is gold is gold. That lump of gold is going to be the same lump of gold a year from now or a hundred years from now. You might as well have buried the money in a backyard for all the change of affected in the world.

If I take that same money and invest it in a business -- the business is going to take that money and create something new. Hopefully what it creates will be worth more than what you invested, but in any case your investment has changed the world in some way.

I think a cryptocurrency is probably something in between that, because your 'investment' is actually ultimately going to miners who will expand the network, so you are actually building something new in a sense by investing in cryptocurrency. However I'm not sure that building the bitcoin network out is a net positive for the world.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#192
post #185
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would change nothing as gold is not an investment. Also, if you 1 one bitcoin you can only sell less than 1 bitcoin from transaction fees. Remember, someone needs to spend real money maintain servers and that money is constantly being removed from the coin ecosystem.

Untrue. You can sell someone the private key to your wallet. That's free. If you're not going to classify commodities or real estate as investments, then sure, I guess bitcoin isn't an investment. But it's as much an investment as any commodity or real estate is.

real estate pays a dividend in the form of use of that land.

If I own a house I get to use the house today and still have a house tomorrow. With a field I could grow crops and then still have a field next year.

Commodities are an interesting 3rd thing. But, closer to buying something from a wholesaler than an investment as they represent actual goods (ie Oil) that will be sent somewhere. Think of it like this, if you buy coffee contract you get coffee which can be sold off. However it's a physical thing and it's got a physical expiration date, if you keep it in a pile somewhere for 10 years you end up with dirt.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#193
post #124

If any one interested in building your trading bot here is open api spec for robinhood. https://github.com/sabareeshkkanan/robinhood

You should put better documentation. It's useless without instruction

I found it useful, it's a good start. Perhaps if you had more context about the toolset you would not find the lack of documentation the thing to comment on. Also, there are better ways to engage in communication than leading with negativity.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#194

Something about Robinhood just makes me uneasy - clearly their main target market is the small retail investor who is sensitive to a $7/trade fee, but the low friction, mobile-first no fee stock trading experience they've created mostly serves to encourage bad investor behavior i.e. emotional, irrational day trading among people who can least afford it. Now they are "democratizing" margin trading (Robinhood Gold), op…

I think Robinhood does a great job of giving young traders the experience and knowledge of what actual trading is like before they're managing really meaningful amounts of money. College kids trading $500 on Robinhood are going to become 30 year olds who have a much better sense of how markets work and how emotion affects their own trading than college kids who are just instructed to give all their savings to mutual…

I agree probably 90%. If this had existed when I was in my first year of university and had a little money in the bank still, I probably would have thrown some at GOOGL when the Gmail beta came out.......

On the other hand, it could have got ugly. Hindsight is often 20/20 and young people can get competitive, over-aggressive, and dumb.

It took me until far more recently to even start to pay any attention to things like financial markets and trading.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#195
So who is responsible for Robinhood's orderbook? Are they partnering with an existing exchange to fulfill market/limit orders? Are they simply paying for the trading fees on behalf of users?

If Robinhood isn't posting their orderbook, why would anyone trust that there are no fees or commissions when they could bake their costs directly into the price? There's no market regulation (a la Reg NMS) for cryptocurrencies, so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing Robinhood to take their cut?

But if they are partnering with an exchange, why pick one over the other? Who will pay for the withdrawal/transaction fees?

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#196

Something about Robinhood just makes me uneasy - clearly their main target market is the small retail investor who is sensitive to a $7/trade fee, but the low friction, mobile-first no fee stock trading experience they've created mostly serves to encourage bad investor behavior i.e. emotional, irrational day trading among people who can least afford it. Now they are "democratizing" margin trading (Robinhood Gold), op…

There's no such thing as a no-fee stock trading. It does not exist: every company that has "no fee" stock trading sells order flow to market makers.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#197
post #27
post #22

> Invest in Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies > Cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, and options are now available side by side — all easily accessible in one app. Managing your investments just got even easier. There is a dangerous theme of companies aimed at millennials that misappropriate Bitcoin (etc) as an investment, when it is just glorified currency exchange speculation. Blurring these lines obscures the real-world…

I buy bitcoin, it changes in value, I cash out, I now have a different amount of money than I put in. How is that not an investment?

Investment is to buy something that has value even if there is no one to sell it to.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#198
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robinhood makes money on execution (through exchange maker-taker fees [1] and reselling order flow to hedge funds or market makers). It's in their best interest to promote more volume to increase revenue. They're making money of each and every trade. [1] for example https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=bx_pricing

Ah, I didn't know they made money off that part of it. I suppose you give up some privacy/data when they resell your order, similar to using Facebook or Google. It's a slick business model, I didn't even realize it.

> Ah, I didn't know they made money off that part of it. I suppose you give up some privacy/data when they resell your order, similar to using Facebook or Google. It's a slick business model, I didn't even realize it.

Your also giving up better trade execution ie paying more for shares. Robinhood is good for getting your feet wet but people should switch brokers as soon as possible.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#199

Something about Robinhood just makes me uneasy - clearly their main target market is the small retail investor who is sensitive to a $7/trade fee, but the low friction, mobile-first no fee stock trading experience they've created mostly serves to encourage bad investor behavior i.e. emotional, irrational day trading among people who can least afford it. Now they are "democratizing" margin trading (Robinhood Gold), op…

There's no such thing as a no-fee stock trading. It does not exist: every company that has "no fee" stock trading sells order flow to market makers.

Every single retail brokerage including all the companies that charge "fees" also sell order flows to market makers. All of them.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#200

So who is responsible for Robinhood's orderbook? Are they partnering with an existing exchange to fulfill market/limit orders? Are they simply paying for the trading fees on behalf of users? If Robinhood isn't posting their orderbook, why would anyone trust that there are no fees or commissions when they could bake their costs directly into the price? There's no market regulation (a la Reg NMS) for cryptocurrencies,…

> so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing Robinhood to take their cut?

Are you referring to market orders? I don't understand this. If I place a limit order for 1 share at $20. And the order gets filled at this price; where do you think Robinhood is taking a cut? I think the strategy you mention could be possible with market orders however.

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