All Eligible Waitlist Members Now Have a Crypto Wallet – Lightning Network is Coming to Robinhood

Today at the Bitcoin conference in Miami, Florida, Robinhood Chief Product Officer Aparna Chennapragada shared that we’ve rolled out Crypto Wallets to every eligible person on the WenWallets waitlist of more than two million people. Now, all eligible customers who signed up for the waitlist will be able to send and receive any of the cryptocurrencies currently available on Robinhood. Due to local regulations, Crypto Wallets aren’t yet available in Hawaii, Nevada or New York, and we’ll inform those customers when this changes.

With Wallets, customers will have full access to their crypto, and can use it to participate in the crypto ecosystem—by tipping on social media, paying for NFTs and more. Unlike some other crypto platforms, there is no fee to withdraw crypto from Robinhood. 

 “Our goal is to make Robinhood the most trusted and easiest to use crypto platform. We’re excited to bring even lower costs to our customers by integrating with the Lightning network,” said Vlad Tenev, CEO and Co-Founder of Robinhood.

With Crypto Wallets, we aim to offer the most seamless and intuitive way for customers to use their crypto, with the intuitive design customers have come to expect, and features such as:

• Scan QR codes to easily send crypto to a wallet address 
• Enhanced security and fraud protection mechanisms, including mandatory Two-factor authentication (2FA) to help protect customers’ crypto and address validation for most wallet addresses so customers can make sure they are sending to a valid wallet address 
• Network and gas fees—a transaction fee to utilize a blockchain—will be applied on top of all requested transfers for convenience (except for Send All cases, in which case, they are deducted.) We’re constantly monitoring our network fee estimation to get the best price for customers 
• Monitor transfer activity from within the settings of the Robinhood app to get the latest information on a transfer 
• See the estimated dollar value of the crypto, before sending it

Lightning is Coming to Bitcoin Transfers

Enabling send and receive functionality is just the first step in an exciting journey for Robinhood Crypto. We’re building to enable customers to do more with their wallets, and to reduce cost wherever we can when they interact with the crypto ecosystem. 

We will be adding the ability to transact on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, an open-source “layer-2” for Bitcoin transactions in the near future. Because these transactions occur “off-chain,” Lightning network transactions occur in a matter of seconds vs. minutes and for pennies vs. dollars, saving customers time and money. Network fees will vary based on demand in the Bitcoin network.

What’s more, Lightning Network Bitcoin transfers reduce the carbon footprint of the transaction as bitcoin miners are not needed to validate.

We will be sharing more over the coming months as we build the integration.