Robinhood announces new COO to lead crypto trading desk

Retail trading app Robinhood has appointed Christine Brown as the chief operating officer of its crypto division.

The company announced the appointment in a statement on its website on Thursday. Brown, who is the current vice president of operations at Robinhood Markets, will now also oversee Robinhood Crypto following the appointment.

Commenting on her new role, Brown expressed excitement at pivoting from traditional finance to the crypto space. “I couldn’t be more excited to lead our crypto operations, help our teams build amazing products, and deliver a great experience for our customers,” the executive added.

According to the announcement, Brown’s appointment will help accelerate the growth of Robinhood Crypto. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, over 6 million new customers bought crypto on the platform within the first two months of 2021 — more than 15 times the 2020 average.

By the end of Q1 2021, Robinhood revealed that 9.5 million customers had traded crypto on its platform. This figure marks a 500% increase in the figures recorded for Q4 2020.

Indeed, Robinhood said its crypto business has grown three-fold in 2021, with CEO Vlad Tenev stating plans for further expansions back in March. At the time, Tenev also expressed plans to add more trading pairs as well as the possibility of creating a cryptocurrency wallet.

Presently, the retail trading app lists Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) in its crypto trading catalog.

Robinhood’s crypto business growth has come amid an apparent wave of interest in financial literacy. Trading apps offered by Robinhood and American exchange giant Coinbase are seeing more downloads on smartphone app stores than popular social media platforms like TikTok.