Robinhood Officially Kickstarts the Beta Testing of its Crypto Wallets

Nasdaq-listed retail trading platform, Robinhood has unveiled the start of the Beta testing for its highly anticipated Crypto Wallets. Dubbed the WenWallets campaign, the multi-market brokerage platform said it has started rolling out crypto wallets to the first 1000 people on its wallets waitlist, to help test out the functionality of the new feature.

Robinhood is home to so many retail stock market traders as it boasts of zero commission, an allowance many see as an empowerment scheme compared to what regular Wall Street players offer. The brokerage shot to prominence last year atop the Gamestop shock squeeze saga as well as its adoption of digital currencies.

While users can purchase digital currencies on Robinhood, the most popular of which is Dogecoin (DOGE), and Bitcoin (BTC), the acquired coins are locked and cannot be transferred to an external wallet. This restriction has earned the company a sharp rebuke from crypto users who demanded wallet functionalities to be added, and the platform is bringing this to pass with its new wallets program.

“We’ll begin rolling out crypto Wallets to 1,000 customers from the top of the Wallets waitlist (subject to owning an external wallet for testing and some safety checks). By March, we will expand the program to 10,000 customers before rolling out to the rest of the WenWallets waitlist,” Robinhood said in an update published on its site, adding that,

“This is the second major milestone in our Wallets rollout, which will enable Robinhood customers to send and receive their crypto from Robinhood to external crypto wallets, and fully connect Robinhood crypto holders to the greater blockchain ecosystem for the very first time.”

The Beta Tester’s Role

Beta users will have a daily transaction limit of $2,999 atop 10 transactions. With the ability to send and receive their cryptocurrencies from external wallets, the testers will provide valuable feedback to inform the final version of the product. As the exchange noted, the Beta testing period will be accompanied by the finalization of the send and receive flows. Additionally, extra functionalities will be added as the platform is confirmed.

“Over the duration of the Beta program, we will finalize the send and receive flows, add delightful QR scanning experiences, improve the transaction history interface, and add block explorer support to provide more insights into their on-chain transactions. We will also add the ability for customers to calculate the dollar amount of crypto to send/receive in terms of dollar amounts,” Robinhood confirmed.

Other mainstream brokerage firms that have adopted cryptocurrencies will also likely trail the footsteps of Robinhood to open up their user’s crypto assets for more usability. The move is projected to positively impact Robinhood’s ailing stock in the near term.