Robinhood Crypto announced on 6 August that Ethereum Classic was now available for investment, commission-free, on its platform. The announcement was made via a Tweet on its Twitter account and an official blog post.
Ethereum Classic Defies the Decline
Ethereum Classic (ETC) rose over 9% and jumped from rank 12 to 11 as the news came out. Most other cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and XRP, however, witnessed a fall in prices. Among the top 10 on Coin Market Cap, XRP was down by over 4%, IOTA by nearly 13% and Stellar by almost 2%.
The blog post also stated that investors could invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Dogecoin, and access the market data for 10 other cryptocurrencies. Apart from the six cryptocurrencies which the exchange offers for trading, it supports real-time market data for Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Dash (DASH), Lisk (LSK), Monero (XMR), NEO (NEO), OmiseGO (OMG), Qtum (QTUM), Ripple (XRP), Stellar (XLM), and Zcash (ZEC). At the moment, the offering is available in 19 US states only, however, the company will add support for more states soon.
Robinhood Crypto’s addition of ETC comes just a day before Coinbase offers trading support for the cryptocurrency as well.
“We intend to allow 24–48 hours of transfers through Pro/Prime before opening the markets. In accordance with our Trading Rules, all ETC books will open in post-only for a minimum of 10 mins. Once sufficient liquidity is established, trading will then be enabled on Pro and Prime,”
Coinbase announced in its blog. It also explained that since ETC will be added to Coinbase Markets, it will be added to the Coinbase Index according to the Coinbase Index Methodology. In the case of Coinbase, ETC will be available wherever Coinbase is available.
Currently, BitMEX, Binance, LiveCoin, Bitfinex, Poloniex and Kraken support ETC/BTC trading. However, Robinhood offers zero-commission transactions, a feature which works in the favour of investors. Robinhood’s business model is based on making profits from interest on cash and securities held in customers’ accounts, and through offering them premium account memberships such as Robinhood Gold. Apart from crypto, Robinhood also offers traditional investment options such as stock, options and ETFs. As of May 2018, the number of users on Robinhood’s trading app had surpassed 4 million.
ETC’s blockchain, is a continuation of the original Ethereum blockchain with untampered history. The original Ethereum blockchain had undergone a hard fork which due to the DAO hack in 2016. ETC recently topped $2.2 Billion in circulation. The news of Robinhood and Coinbase adding the cryptocurrency acted as a catalyst for helped ETC scale significant resistance at $19.
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