Controversial brokerage firm Robinhood has been repeatedly accused of unfair trading practices after banning the trading of DOGE and GME over the past few months due to news we all know by now.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev announced that the company will list even more cryptocurrencies and hire extra staff. The expansion comes in the wake of a major controversy surrounding the deletion of various "meme titles" from the company, leading to allegations of collusion with Wall Street.
Robinhood reveals cryptographic ambitions
In a video posted on Thursday, Tenev said the company is working on its wallet features and is considering listing new coins.
“As much as people annoy me on social media, I am annoying our crypto team and our software engineers. We will try to do this as quickly as possible. And we'll see. We could add some new coins along the way, ”Tenev said.
Tenev added that the company would hire a "ton" of staff and made statements to criticize Coinbase and other crypto exchanges.
“One thing we're probably not doing is a great job of communicating with customers, despite the fact that our offering is very affordable,” Tenev said. "If you trade on Coinbase, or other smaller exchanges, you pay 1%, 2% and even more."
The CEO has openly addressed the loss of confidence that the company has suffered due to the delisting of the GME stock (NASDAQ shares) and other activities during a social media frenzy that had pumped up prices.
What happened
In January, members of the Reddit WallStreetBets community noted that various hedge funds were overexposed on their short positions on GameStop shares and performed a short squeeze, resulting in billions of dollars in liquidations for Wall Street institutions. One hedge fund, Melvin Capital, had to be bailed out by Citadel for $ 2 billion.
GME's rally left its mark: for the first time retail traders managed to beat Wall Street and GME's delisting from Robinhood caused outrage across the financial community. Robinhood closed many long positions without traders' permission, resulting in loss of funds and allegations of corruption and collusion with Robinhood's Wall Street partners.
The company also stopped trading cryptocurrencies at the height of a shopping frenzy spurred by public figures, including Elon Musk. The move was again met with indignation among retail traders. However, Robinhood registered another 3 million traders joining its platform in February.
Tenev was summoned to testify before the US Senate, refusing to answer questions about potential untruths he had told the media about liquidity problems and his reasons for stopping cryptocurrency trading.
In the latest video, he acknowledged the reputational damage Robinhood had suffered, stating that "we are doing everything we can to spread the true story."
