Robinhood Markets Inc (NASDAQ:HOOD) said Tuesday it has acquired Cove Markets, a cross-exchange trading platform.
What Happened: The Cove Markets team and the company’s co-founders Scott Knudsen and Victor Glava will join the Robinhood crypto team.
“Scott, Victor and the Cove Markets team will bolster our crypto trading platform and help us strengthen our leadership in the crypto industry,” said Christine Brown, chief operating officer of Robinhood Crypto.
“Their wealth of experience in trading execution and crypto market infrastructure will help us to build more powerful trading capabilities, bringing the benefits of better competition in the crypto markets to our customers,” Brown said in a statement.
See Also: How To Buy Shares On Robinhood (HOOD)
Why It Matters: This is the first such acquisition for Robinhood Crypto, as it prepares to roll out cryptocurrency wallets, The Block noted.
On Tuesday, it was reported that Robinhood is integrating analytics tools from Chainalysis for the purposes of flagging risky transactions and visualizing chains for due diligence.
The Vlad Tenev co-founded trading platform is expected to commence beta testing for its cryptocurrency platforms in January.
The wallets are expected to allow Robinhood users to deposit or withdraw cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), and Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE), which they can't at present.
Robinhood said it is “actively hiring” for its cryptocurrency team across its offices in the United States as well as remote locations.
Price Action: On Tuesday, Robinhood shares closed nearly 2.9% lower at $19.13 in the regular session. At press time, BTC traded 3.09% higher at $48,143.85.
