About the last time I bought crypto was when Robinhood released the ability to do so. This was back in Feb. of 2018 nearly 5 years ago already and just before the bull market started to take off.
One of the nice things about it was how quickly you could buy and sell major crypto assets along with some meme tokens like Doge. But all of it was tracked for taxes which removed the splitting headache that comes with other platforms.
The big plus of this was how easy it was and still is to take Fiat dollars and convert it into crypto. No going through all the loop holes with traditional centralized exchanges. This seamless flow of buying and trading assets of crypto with a push of a button or the flick of the finger was primed for the bull run where people showed off their massive profits. It dwarfed the stock market even though that was also in a major rally.
It's been long talked about companies moving over seas or to take on the EU space but none really have. It was strongly speculated for a long time that Coinbase might leave the USA and start operations elsewhere but that's been since backtracked.
U.K During the last bull run said they where going to be a "hub" for all things crypto. However that never really shaped up into anything. To be fair the EU is one of the worst resource rich areas in the world and heavily relies on others for natural resources like coal, oil and natural gas. It only makes sense that their business would be finances instead and building themselves into a hub for crypto would make sense.
This move could be the start of that as Robinhood is looking to hire staff in the U.K. With much of the staff now in place Robinhood will soon be launching their brokerage operations in the U.K. Perhaps a step ahead of Coinbase who also expressed interest in doing this earlier this year.
Currently the demand for crypto in such systems is low as prices have been stagnate or depreciation in value for some time now. Only recently have we seen spikes in bitcoin and some other altcoins. The company ended up seeing less trading done in crypto this year compared to the year prior but I'm speculating when I say that number has most likely jumped in the last month as Bitcoin has moon shot and the hype demand for the bull market remains high at the moment.
Robinhood also recently pulled a number of crypto tokens much like Coinbase did this year. These are crypto assets that the SEC deems to be a security even though nothing has officially passed yet and many of these tokens are still doing very well primarily look at SOL (Solana). Cardano (ADA), Polygon(MATIC) and Solana (SOL).
Overall we are starting to see the crypto sector expand at least in the traditional companies and markets. My best guess is these platforms like Robinhood which this article is primarily about but also Coinbase well be replacements for other centralized exchanges and a big key entry point for capital.
The other aspect of that is DEX platforms are growing in popularity. One of the biggest at the moment that I've been waiting is Thorchain. These DEX will be replacements for centralized exchanges which still do hold a decent amount of market cap but have been falling for a long time now.
