Robinhood Raises Another $363 Million Amid Crypto Push
*By Alisha Haridasani*
The free trading app Robinhood, which offers stocks and options trading without commission fees, announced Thursday that it closed a Series D round of funding with $363 million. That brings the fintech start-up's valuation to $5.6 billion.
With 4 million users, Robinhood has been able to overtake the online trading industry's biggest player, E*TRADE, which has 3.7 million users.
“E*TRADE has been around since the original dot-com boom and is kind of considered the industry standard of online brokerages,” said Dan Primack, business editor of Axios. “The fact that Robinhood has been able to outpace them in terms of users in such a short period of time, I think is quite remarkable.”
Much of Robinhood’s growth has come from its new cryptocurrency trading platform, co-founder and co-CEO Baiju Bhatt told [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/10/trading-app-robinhood-surpasses-e-trade-in-user-numbers.html). That platform offers trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and is available in 10 states, with plans to expand.
Beyond crypto, Robinhood aims to build more products, said Primack, who spoke with one of Robinhood’s co-founders before the company announced its latest funding.
Robinhood's new initiatives could include its own credit cards, platforms to trade other securities, and possibly an insurance product, Primack said.
Since Robinhood doesn’t make any money from commissions, it relies on subscriptions for its revenue. The firm [reportedly](http://fortune.com/2018/05/10/robinhood-stock-crypto-trading/) plans to stick to that business model.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/robinhood-quadruples-valuation-with-363-million-round-of-funding).
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