Robinhood announces new crypto investing feature as it looks to bulk up offering

Robinhood announced Wednesday a new feature for its crypto product that will allow users to automatically make investments in the market on a recurring basis, the latest new feature for a fast-growing part of the company’s business. 

The brokerage app company said that the feature would help reduce the impact of crypto’s volatility by allowing users to invest in intervals rather than in large lump sums—a strategy known as dollar-cost averaging. The product will be available to a select number of users starting Wednesday.

“Dollar-cost averaging encourages investing money gradually at regular intervals, rather than all at once and regardless of where market prices stand, in order to help smooth out the price swings that can sometimes occur,” Robinhood said. 

To be sure, Robinhood isn’t the only crypto platform that allows users to atomically invests. Rivals like FTX.US and Coinbase offer similar features. Still, the addition of reoccurring investments for Robinhood represents a step toward broadening a crypto-focused business line that’s become more important for the brokerage, which recently went public on Nasdaq. 

According to the firm’s most recent earnings, the firm’s transaction-based revenues from cryptocurrency trading increased 4,282% from Q2 of 2020 to Q2 of 2021.

In an interview with The Block, Robinhoodcrypto lead Christine Brown said that the firm has been planning on offering to its clients for some time and hopes that it will “reduce the stress of timing the markets.”

As for future products, Brown said the firm has a “healthy appetite to continue to invest in products that democratize finance,” noting that a wallet function is on the product roadmap and is actively being developed.