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Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

crypto.robinhood.com

231–240 of 317 posts

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#231
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better question might be: How is anything an investment? If the stock market is priced efficiently, it is as much a gamble as Bitcoin. The stock market is of course not perfectly efficient, but it is likely extremely efficient relative to the knowledge of your average retail investor. Which means that buying Bitcoin or other cryptos is no more a gamble than any stock market investment with a similar volatility.

I also think the stock market is not "investing" but think it's safer to invest. 1. There's more government regulation and less manipulation. 2. New money is constantly flowing in, via 401K's and pensions. Most people aren't even aware they're invested in the stock market. 3. The government cares so much about the stock market doing good. Look at how Trump brags about the booming market. If it goes in a funk, the gov…

> People say "past is not a predictor/indicator of the present", yet they love to say "stocks return 7-8% annually, and you should just invest in an index to enjoy such returns". Why? That's such as a huge assumption that everyone takes for granted.

Well, you're leaving out something something about the company putting your money to use to increase efficiency or output something something and something something about dividends from the proceeds, none of which you have with cryptocurrencies. (Though it may be disputable whether those are truly the reasons behind the historical returns of stocks and thus good reasons to expect it to continue, even if you wouldn't guarantee the exact numbers, or if those are simply motivated reasons that may or may not be reliable future indicators...)

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#232
post #230
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bitcoin provides a service though - a service that has demonstrable economic utility. Specifically: international value transfer. There are existing mechanisms for this (western union, swift) and they have costs. The sum of those costs is a reasonable way to think about Bitcoin's theoretical value by substitution, because it costs bitcoin to move bitcoin. And therefore if Bitcoin were to replace all other intl. value…

Owning bitcoins don't facilitate these transactions by third party's. The service can create value but don't let the name of the service be confused with the coins.

You could speculate that the utility created will increase the value of the coins you hold. However, unlike mining there is no connection between buying a coin and enabling other people to do these transactions.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are retail brokerages that allow one to specify execution path. Those brokerages cannot sell such order flow. There are retail brokerages that allow one to collect order flow charges. Those brokerages cannot make money on such order flow.

Which ones?

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#234
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, except the college kids who just give all their money to mutual funds will make more money. The day-traders won't "learn how markets work," they'll learn how to lose money by making dumb trades based on less information than their counterparties. They won't learn anything, aaaannnnyyyyything, of actual value.

College kid who started trading in RH a while ago here. After reading some basic investment books from authors like Peter Lynch, Taleb, and What Jim Paul, decided to get some experience in the markets. Invested a little saved and since then made a decent return, better than if that money was in a bank. So far, I'm doing better than the large-company mutual funds after 3 years, but as I've been reading, that's probabl…

> Invested a little saved and since then made a decent return, better than if that money was in a bank. So far, I'm doing better than the large-company mutual funds after 3 years, but as I've been reading, that's probably good luck.

The only thing you should be comparing yourself against is the s&p500, if you haven't beaten that, then you're down.

Also, the markets have been in an unprecedented bull run. Everything you've learned will be useless once the tide turns

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#235
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a cash grab which will expose their users to poorly-understood risks and will likely not put anyone on a more stable financial footing. That's already the case. Their entire user-base is comprised of naive stock market investors. If they really wanted to bring about a more stable financial footing for their users they would just offer dressed-up ETFs.

Point taken, investing in individual stocks may very well not be helping anyone.

I take it you didn't buy amazon 10 years ago for a 1600% return?

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Every single retail brokerage including all the companies that charge "fees" also sell order flows to market makers. All of them. Not true, Interactive Brokers doesn't sell your order flow.

that may very well be really bad for consumers. If Robinhood sells to Citadel and Citadel has better execution than IB, you are getting worse prices on IB.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#237
post #37

As a very happy user of Robinhood financial, this really does look exciting. If you’ve not used robinhood, and have a little interest in investing, I’ve found their simple interface to be very nice to use relative to the more heavy weight options I’ve had experience with (etrade, schwab, fidelity). I didn’t see how their crypto offering would allow me to transfer my wallet from Coinbase to them, do I create a new wal…

The main draw for me is no commission fees on virtually any stock or ETF. Although I did just try to buy SPXH (S&P500 + Volatility Hedge) and for some mysterious reason it was "not available for trading on Robinhood", even though it's an ETF with a not-miniscule AUM ($50M). I pinged their support about this, and it took them over a week to get back to me to ask what type of security SPXH is.

$50M is a minuscule AUM for any ETF, especially one meant for trading (volatility hedged vehicles are not good for buy and hold). Institutional investors, Hedge funds, etc will not touch such an illiquid fund.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#238
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very good app for buying up small (50-500 dollar) blocks of ETFs to hold, which is what I do. Thanks for the free trades, VC guys.

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

that's a bizarre complaint for a brokerage. Every brokerage exists to make money on trades.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad behavior? RH's market is the Millennials who see it as a fancy gambling, check out Reddit's r/RobinHood or - even better - r/wallstreetbets. I can see RH becoming a dominant player in the Tech Fin Millennials space.

>or - even better - r/wallstreetbets. This is not a serious sub, it is satire/trolling/shitposting.

4chan for stocks.
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