The popular retail investment and trading platform Robinhood, which has some 26 million users and manages some $255 billion in assets, has just received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to operate brokerage services in the city-state. Robinhood is especially popular among retail crypto traders after launching its crypto trading app in 2023. The firm has been rigorously expanding into crypto services, as well as offering tokenized equities that trade 24/7 on the blockchain. It has also made Singapore its regional base for expansion in Asia, where crypto adoption is soaring.
“Singapore’s world-class regulatory environment, high rates of digital adoption, and growing population of retail investors make it the ideal hub for our mission,” said Patrick Chan, head of Asia for Robinhood.
Yet, this is just in-principle approval by MAS and not a license at this stage. MAS saida license will only be issued if conditions are met and there are no material adverse developments.
Robinhood’s new crypto competitor
Robinhood’s Singapore push comes after competitor Charles Schwab announced its first foray into crypto through the establishment of “Schwab Crypto,” allowing customers of the financial giant to trade in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
“By enabling crypto trading directly within a familiar brokerage platform, Schwab is reducing friction and expanding access for more capital to flow into both BTC and ETH,” wrote TradingView in a recent article.
The move places the brokerage in direct competition with Robinhood, which serves a comparatively younger clientele. Last week, the progressive firm added a cryptocurrency that has for years been operating on the regulatory fringe of US finance: Zcash, a coin designed with a focus on privacy, offering users the option to shield transaction details – a feature that distinguishes it from many other digital assets. This feature has put it at odds with regulators and critics argue this can be used for nefarious purposes. On the other hand, proponents say privacy should be a key feature of decentralized finance and embodies true financial freedom.
Encrypted Bitcoin
Zcash (ZEC) made headlines last year after the American billionaire Winklevoss twins, involved in the creation of Facebook, led a $58.9 million funding raise to pivot an obscure biotech firm, Leap Therapeutics (LPTX), into a Zcash treasury firm. The firm purchased $50 million of ZEC, becoming among the top holders of this privacy coin.
At the time, Tyler Winklevoss posted on X.
“If Bitcoin is digital gold, Zcash is encrypted bitcoin, or digital cash. One is your store of value, the other is how you privately move your value…We’ve been tracking this symbiosis for years and believe that now — as we enter the age of AI — is the right time [for] ZEC.”