At the Bitcoin conference 2022 in Miami, Robinhood announced the roll out of crypto wallets to every eligible person on the Wenwallets waitlist. Robinhood also announced its plans to add the Bitcoin Lightning Network to its platform.
There were around 2 million eligible wallets that got activated and which can now send and receive digital assets.
Announced by the Chief Product Officer Aparna Chennapragada, every user whose wallet is activated gets full access to their crypto. They can use it to participate in the “crypto ecosystem”.
Robinhood users can scan QR codes for crypto transfers to wallet addresses and see the estimated dollar value of a crypto before transferring it. The platform has also set up a two factor authentication (2FA) for increased security.
A network and gas fee will be imposed on top of every requested transaction. However, users can withdraw their crypto from the platform without paying any fees.
The wallets were not activated for waitlisted users in Hawaii, New York and Nevada due to local regulations.
Robinhood’s wallet launch has been in the works for almost six months. In December Robinhood partnered with Chainalysis to utilize Chainalysis’ Know Your Transaction and Chainalysis Reactor services. In January, the Crypto Beta Wallets program was rolled out to the top 1000 customers on the waitlist.
Robinhood also shared its plans to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network onto its platform. The network is a low-cost, environment-friendly and open source Layer-2 for Bitcoin transactions.
Vlad Tenev, CEO and Co-Founder of Robinhood said, “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”.
Talking about the roadmap for crypto integration on Robinhood, Chennapragada said “The first was 24/7 customer support, the second has been adding crypto wallets and the third is starting to power very kind of broad use cases — the Lightning Network is one of them”.
Due to its enhanced properties, the adoption of the Lightning Network has been quite quick. In January, CashApp, the mobile payment app also integrated the Lightning Network onto its platform.
