What's stopping Robinhood from leaning more into crypto?
I feel like they've diluted their brand as a reliable, long-term public equity exchange (Edit: broker*). It would seem much more suitable if they played to the free-thinking audience in crypto markets. A roadblock I see is being able to maintain their commission-free stance if they did this. I assume they're taking big losses on transaction fees for the limited offering they currently have, which let's be honest is an IOU for a few currencies. How do they save themselves without payment for order flow?
Robin Hood was never known as being reliable, it's a shady stockbroker marketed at millennial kids to gamble. Second, it is literally not an exchange, it's a broker. Finally I do agree with you that crypto scam stuff is perfectly aligned with Robin Hood's brand reputation and they should get into that and focus primarily on that before they go bankrupt.
Nobody seriously invested in crypto would ever think to use RH. They have ruined their reputation in crypto as well. It’s a shit company
Also Robinhood is not commission-free, they just charge differently. If a restaurant increases its prices 30% and said they don't accept tips are they tip-free? This is the same as RH playing games with bad stock execution to generate profits that exceed commissions at the customer's detriment.
You might have that perception but it's absolutely not true https://robinhood.com/us/en/about-us/our-execution-quality/
Lol, "best execution" is interpreted by retail investors to mean best price across all exchanges, with reasonably fast speed secondary. This is not what RH delivers. Paid flow uses a creative definition of best execution that is right on the edge of the gray zone of what's legal, and totally different from what customers believe they are receiving.
By free-thinking I mean risk-on investors really.
No, that's not what happened. Look up DTCC insurance etc.. why are people making up these conspiracy stories when it's so easy to look stuff up..