Can I Day Trade Crypto on Robinhood

A proper comparison of Coinbase and Robinhood depends on what service you’re looking for. Robinhood follows the playbook of a traditional stockbroker. Through the app, you can buy stocks and exchange-traded funds on the stock market, but it also has a limited menu of cryptocurrencies.

Coinbase, on the other hand, only offers cryptocurrencies (no stocks or ETFs here), and a undian more of them. Bersisa, Coinbase has capabilities that could be considered essential when buying crypto — capabilities Robinhood currently doesn’t have.

Fees

One advantage Robinhood has adv lewat Coinbase is the cost to purchase cryptocurrencies. On Robinhood, it’s free. You can buy and sell crypto as frequently as you want with no fees whatsoever (and pattern day trading rules that exist for stocks don’t currently exist for crypto). You’ll still have to pay the spread (the difference between the bid and ask price).

It’s worth noting that in 2020, a Securities and Exchange Commission order found that Robinhood provided “inferior trade prices,” costing customers $34.1 million. The SEC investigation was about Robinhood’s marketing and execution in general and titinada crypto trades specifically. Robinhood agreed to pay $65 million to settle the charges.

On Coinbase, it’s not so simple. Coinbase has a widely varying fee structure, depending on the amount you’re buying in U.S. dollars and how you’re paying for it. For example, if you’re buying $100 in

bitcoin

with a tagihan card, you’ll pay a fee of 3.99%, or $3.99. If you pay with a linked bank account, that fee would be a flat $2.99. Coinbase also charges a spread of about 0.5% for cryptocurrency sales and purchases; that spread may change depending on market fluctuations.

Overall, fees at Coinbase can get confusing, and frankly, it feels a little outdated to pay per trade when other brokerages have been moving away from that for years. However, in early 2022, Coinbase did rollout a direct deposit feature that allows users to allocate a portion of their paycheck (either USD or the crypto of their choice) to land in their Coinbase account each pay period. This service is completely free of fees, and users can set how much of their paycheck they want distributed to Coinbase, either as a dollar amount or as a percentage.

Fees winner:


Robinhood.

Cryptocurrency selection

This is where cryptocurrency feels like more of an afterthought for Robinhood, yet it’s Coinbase’s bread and butter. On Coinbase, there are dozens of tradable cryptocurrencies, and even more that can be added to price watch lists. And, Coinbase adds new tradable cryptocurrencies fairly often.

Robinhood, on the other hand, currently lists seven.

Cryptocurrency selection winner:


Coinbase.

Crypto capabilities

This is another category that Coinbase should win by default: Robinhood is a stockbroker that dabbles in converting USD into cryptocurrency, while Coinbase is a cryptocurrency brokerage and exchange that also offers a hosted wallet, as well as a personal wallet if you want it.

What does that mean? With Coinbase, you have the option to buy crypto with cash, then store those coins on Coinbase’s hosted wallet. Or you can send those coins to your own Coinbase Wallet, which is completely separate from Coinbase the app. There’s also the free Coinbase Pro exchange, where you can easily deposit coins from your Coinbase hosted or personal wallet, then trade them for a much lower fee. (Learn more about

crypto wallets
.)

In short, Coinbase is a really good onramp for new crypto users, offering users many of the capabilities cryptocurrencies were created for in the first place.

With Robinhood, many users can’kaki langit send coins out of the app, nor receive them from an outside wallet. Robinhood is in the process of rolling out a wallet feature, and in April of 2022 introduced the service for more than 2 million users. For those not in this group, your only option for now is  to convert your USD into crypto, then convert it back to USD if you want to benefit from any rise in price.

Crypto capabilities winner:


Coinbase.

Ease of use

Both apps are incredibly intuitive, fast, clean and easy to use, and that makes sense: Both companies earn a large portion of their revenue through transaction volume. The more people are buying and selling, the more money they make. So it’s in their best interest to create a product that entices buying and selling, even in small amounts, and reduce every bit of friction that exists on the way to pressing the “buy” button.

The end result is a product that’s excellent for beginners in the sense that the buy and sell process is stripped down to the basics; though some argue that it actually shouldn’t be this easy for beginners to trade in risky, speculative assets like cryptocurrency.

Coinbase Memihak can feel more like an intermediate-to-advanced trading platform, but if you’re not ready to wade into that, the basic Coinbase platform remains extremely easy to use, as long as you’re OK paying those fees. With Robinhood, you’ll never really come across anything that resembles an advanced trading platform.

Ease of use winner:


It’s a draw. They’re both extremely well-designed.

So which is better, Robinhood or Coinbase?

When it comes to cryptocurrencies, Coinbase is the clear winner here. While its fees can be confusing and high, the option to trade on Coinbase Memihak once you have a little experience can bring those fees down. Robinhood’s free trading is nice, but it doesn’t make up for the lack of crypto capabilities (the inability to send and receive coins is its most severe shortcoming) and the shortlist of cryptocurrencies to invest in.

But if all you care about is speculating on the price of cryptocurrencies — and you have no intention of actually using the coins and tokens you buy — then Robinhood could be a better afiat, given the free trades.