First came the meme coins. Then the jpegs. Now FTX US is betting on the original retail investment vehicle: Stocks.
The Chicago branch of Sam Bankman-Fried's trading empire announced Thursday it will begin testing stock trading features for a handful of U.S. users.
"Our goal is to provide our clients with a holistic investment service across all asset classes," President Brett Harrison said in a statement. The company did not give a timeline for a broader rollout.
The launch comes at a time when FTX is making an aggressive push into the traditional financial ecosystem. Its explosive growth in the U.S. has encouraged the trading firm, which has its roots in an offshore crypto derivatives exchange, to challenge closely guarded rules governing commodity markets.
That effort, currently under review by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has long-term potential. However, the stock trading is another sign that FTX US is more interested in the general investing public than exclusively crypto gamblers.
FTX US will not charge commissions or trading fees, in keeping with the low-cost brokerage model that made Robinhood famous. It will not monetize traders' orders by selling order flow to high-frequency traders, a controversial practice called pay for order flow that Robinhood has been criticized for.
(CEO Bankman-Fried recently announced that he had acquired 7% of Robinhood in a stock purchase.)
The exchange also plans to allow its customers to fund their accounts with the stablecoin USDC. This means that the same intermediary for crypto traders can also operate in the stock market.