E*Trade Is Close to Launching Cryptocurrency Trading

&gt; E*Trade would be one of the largest securities brokerages to allow crypto trading. It will enter into a competitive market with startups like Coinbase Inc., which have made names for themselves as go-to places for such transactions. Closely held Coinbase reached a valuation of $8 billion in 2018 and projected sales of $1.3 billion. Fintech startup Robinhood, most recently valued at $5.6 billion, has also added cryptocurrency trading as a way to woo millennial customers.<p>TD Ameritrade has also been rumored to have quietly rolled out Bitcoin trading to some customers:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitcoinmagazine.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;td-ameritrade-nasdaq-reportedly-offer-btc-and-ltc-paper-trades&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitcoinmagazine.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;td-ameritrade-nasdaq-re...</a>

There seem to be ample comments discussing the &quot;viability&quot; of crypto trading&#x2F;tokens, but if I&#x27;m Etrade, all I care about are the commissions - to hell with the underlying tech or what it can&#x2F;can&#x27;t do. Not even just for BTC, ETH, EOS, etc now, but for the coins to come in the future. Sure, they can have prolonged periods of low volume (even manipulated volume), but when there&#x27;s a frenzy (e.g., 2016-2018), I imagine that the profit potential on commissions would do wonders for &quot;shareholder value&quot;. Combine that with Etrade&#x27;s namebrand (as mentioned in other comments) experience, and infrastructure, and you&#x27;ve got a gang of traders that would gladly do away with the sketchy&#x2F;lesser-known exchanges for Etrade (my opinion).

ETrade is presumably very cautious to get started, and very slow to move when they do, by nature of their maturity, scale, and industry context. So they&#x27;re taking many multiples longer than someone like coinbase, for example, to spin up this type of thing.<p>So this initiative probably started years back.<p>Is this late-launching residue from bitcoin&#x27;s 20k days when this would have been, if not less silly, at least less silly looking?<p>Is this evidence that some big names in finance have been deliberately understating their interest in the space, while scrambling beneath the surface to spin up offerings?<p>If the rest of the players in this space also support crypto, it starts to be genuinely commoditized, and maybe that could help it. But if you commoditize something that nobody cares about... does it matter? does it help?

I wonder, can you make an argument that Bitcoin is like an index akin to S&amp;P, but for gambling and hedging against events like asset seizure or state currency failure?<p>First let&#x27;s assume that fundamentals remain unchanged. No innovation, no growth in adoption, no major security failures. Let&#x27;s also assume that the rough percentage of world populations willing to gamble remains roughly the same over the decades. BTC is deflationary, private keys will keep getting lost indefinitely. So wouldn&#x27;t it make sense for the price of Bitcoin to at least keep up with inflation, forever?

So if you buy on ETrade... are you buying actual coins they hold for you or is it some other sort of bitcoin related ... thing?

Are there any numbers on how much crypto is being used as a currency (i.e. actually buying things) vs. how much is being used as an investment (i.e. buying and holding&#x2F;trading with the hope it goes up in value)?<p>I&#x27;m curious how each compares to traditional currency and how much this affects the competitiveness of it as a common currency. My initial thought is that so many people look at it as an investment it may limit it&#x27;s ability to be a good medium for exchange.

Just by trading volume <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coingecko.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;exchanges" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coingecko.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;exchanges</a> it is always a good move to get a piece of the pie. Even etoro has launched an exchange

Based on their marketing, I always assumed E*Trade&#x27;s user base was mostly gamblers, so crypocurrency seems like a natural match.

So should I take my money and securities out of Etrade if they are above the levels guaranteed by SIPC?

Robinhood already does this

Just another instrument for Wall Street to make money. Crypto isn’t about decentralization or immutability at all right now

Interesting that some companies are still interested in cryptocurrency even though it&#x27;s still trending downwards. It&#x27;s more likely that you&#x27;ll lose money each year than make it, especially with emotion tied into the mix.<p>Some good technical concepts exist in this space but the financial element has made the entire space corrupt to its core.<p>As always. The human element left unchecked will turn anything toxic.<p>I used to lean towards more libertarian ideals but seeing what freedom has done to cryptocurrency has shown me some order and law is needed.

Wildly irresponsible but no surprise from the “trading babies” company.