“We’re Not Going to Talk About” SHIB Listing, says COO as Robinhood’s Crypto Wallet Waitlist Jumps

Robinhood will not follow Coinbase in listing as many coins as they can legally for “short-term gain” as it might not be “worth the long-term trade-off” for users.

Robinhood Markets (HOOD) now has a total of 1.6 million people on the waitlist for its cryptocurrency wallet, up from 1 million just a few weeks ago, said Christine Brown, chief operating officer of Robinhood Crypto, at a conference.

The company’s crypto wallet will allow its users to move the crypto assets in and out of Robinhood’s brokerage account. She added that it is currently on track to be launched late in the first quarter of next year.

During the event, Brown was also asked when the trading app plans to list meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB).

“The first thing is that we’re not going to talk about it,” said Brown, who assumed her role in the company in April.

According to her, Robinhood does not intend to follow Coinbase, which has been aiming to list as many coins as they can legally.

“I also think that our strategy is a little bit different than a lot of the other players out there who are just racing to list as many assets as possible right now,” she added. “We think that the short-term gain we might get is not worth the long-term trade-off for our users.”

Currently, there are a limited number of cryptocurrencies listed on the platform, seven to be exact with Dogecoin (DOGE), a popular meme coin, and Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin SV (BSV), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Dogecoin competitor SHIB has rallied ​​95,678,052% in the past year, and its enthusiasts have urged Robinhood to list the coin too. Brown, however, emphasized that they are a “safety-first company” and are “assessing everything from a regulatory perspective really well.”

While Brown pushed for customer safety, on Monday, Robinhood confirmed that it was hacked last week, and more than five million customer email addresses and two million customer names were exposed in this data breach.

The company said that a malicious hacker socially engineered a customer service representative over the phone earlier this month to get access to customer support systems.

The hacker “demanded an extortion payment,” but Robinhood said it instead notified law enforcement. The company has also hired security firm Mandiant to investigate the breach.