Robinhood Relists Solana After Liquidating Depositor’s Assets and Refunding in Cash

Robinhood, a popular TradFi application, has relisted Solana ($SOL), XRP ($XRP), Cardano ($ADA), and Pepe ($PEPE) on its trading platform.

While markets have reacted positively to the announcement, Robinhood’s relisting of Solana is tarnished by the company’s handling of its original delisting in July 2023.

$SOL Returns to Robinhood

With the crypto market breaking out of a long consolidation period, all eyes are back on the blockchain industry. Buoyed by ‘Crypto President’ Donald Trump’s victory and the prospect of clearer crypto regulations in the future, Bitcoin has surged over 28% since November 1st to a new all-time high at around $93,000.

After distancing themselves from the industry in the wake of the FTX collapse, TradFi applications and businesses are now scrambling to present crypto-forward positions to their clients. 

Demonstrating its “commitment to expanding access and maintaining a safe, easy-to-use platform” Robinhood, one of the largest traditional trading applications, has relisted several crypto assets, including Solana.

“We’ve consistently heard from our customers that they want access to more digital assets, and we’re excited to continue expanding our crypto offering. With lower barriers to entry, we believe crypto presents an opportunity for those who have been historically left behind by the traditional financial system.” - Johann Kerbrat, VP and GM of Robinhood Crypto

However, Robinhood’s relisting of Solana is a bittersweet reminder of the platform’s former reluctance to be associated with the asset. In June 2023, Robinhood delisted several crypto assets from its platform after they were mentioned in lawsuits made against Coinbase and Binance by Gary Gensler’s SEC.

Robinhood users were given a few short weeks to sell or withdraw their crypto assets, before ultimately liquidating all assets and refunding account holders with cash. At the time, $SOL was trading at $16.27, meaning that users who had their SOL forcibly swapped by Robinhood have now been excluded from the asset’s 1,215% price increase.

While $SOL, $ADA, and $XRP have all been relisted, Polygon’s $POL token was overlooked in favor of $PEPE, an Ethereum-based memecoin styled after Matt Furie’s iconic frog character.

Robinhood CEO on Crypto: “The Advantage is Undeniable”

Vlad Tenev, Robinhood CEO reaffirmed his belief and confidence in blockchain infrastructure. 

Appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Tenev highlighted how “it costs us [Robinhood] roughly an order of magnitude less to operate a cryptocurrency business and offer the exchange of assets than it does on the TradFi side, I think that advantage is undeniable”

Robinhood’s relisting of popular altcoins has many crypto enthusiasts optimistic that the TradFi exchange is taking deeper strides into the industry. Speculators hope that Robinhood might look to replicate its landmark listing of $SHIB in 2021, which catapulted the memecoin to its all-time high market capitalization of $43B.

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