Trading company Robinhood plans to launch a new decentralized finance-focused (DeFi) wallet by the end of 2022 for customers looking to play in the crypto economy.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev announced the "Web 3 crypto wallet" Tuesday at the Permissionless Conference in Palm Beach. The announcement follows last month's launch of a more tightly controlled crypto wallet that was essentially a way station for users moving tokens in and out of their Robinhood brokerage accounts.
Users of the completely separate Web 3 wallet will be able to lend, deploy, manage and even buy NFTs - much like they would with a MetaMask. These capabilities do not exist in Robinhood's previous wallet. It wasn't immediately clear which blockchain the depository wallet intends to support.
Robinhood's upcoming wallet - it will begin testing in the summer, with a waiting list already open - is expected to compete directly with Coinbase's own offering, which was announced Monday. Both investment giants are making it easier for their crypto trading clients to invest assets in DeFi without leaving their wallet ecosystem. This could lead to DeFi protocols gaining a whole new set of users.
While Coinbase's Web 3 wallet is integrated, Robinhood's is not. Johann Thompson, chief technology officer for cryptocurrencies at Robinhood, said the new wallet is specifically for users seeking "advanced use cases" for cryptocurrencies.
"We see this new product as kind of a brother to Web 3," Thompson told CoinDesk in a phone interview before Tenev's keynote. He said the team is "building this product as effectively as a browser."
The wallet will allow users to buy and store NFTs, earn returns on assets and access a variety of tokens not currently available on Robinhood.
"We want to give [users] the last missing piece to access the Web 3 space," Thompson said.