Robinhood Brings Crypto Transfers to Europe: More Than 20 Digital Assets Open for Self-Custody

Lead summary: Robinhood Markets, Inc. on October 1, 2024, announced that customers in the European Union can now transfer cryptocurrencies in and out of its app. The upgrade gives European users self-custody of more than 20 digital assets and marks the next step in the company's international expansion.

Hardware cryptocurrency wallet connected to a smartphone on a home desk

From trading on the platform to self-custody

In a blog post published on Tuesday, the retail investing platform said that EU customers can now deposit and withdraw more than 20 digital currencies through Robinhood, including bitcoin, ethereum, solana and USD coin (USDC). The change effectively grants European users the ability to "self-custody" their assets: instead of entrusting cryptocurrency to a third-party platform, a customer can take ownership of it in a fully owned wallet that holds the funds.

Robinhood first brought crypto trading to the EU in December 2023, when it launched the Robinhood Crypto service. That product allowed users to buy and sell digital assets but not to move them away from the platform — neither to another provider nor to their own self-custodial wallet. The October 2024 update removes that restriction.

What the update includes

deposits and withdrawals of more than 20 cryptocurrencies for EU customers, including bitcoin, ethereum, solana and USD coin;
self-custody: assets can be moved into a wallet fully owned by the customer;
a limited-time promotion returning 1% of the value of tokens deposited, paid in the equivalent cryptocurrency transferred into Robinhood;
geography: crypto trading, deposits and withdrawals are available in the European Union only — not in the U.K., where Robinhood's stock trading service launched in November 2023 and crypto services are not yet offered.

Why Europe

Johann Kerbrat, general manager of Robinhood's crypto unit, told CNBC that crypto-friendly regulation gives the EU the potential to become an attractive market for digital currencies.

"The EU can become a very attractive market next year," Kerbrat said in an interview, pointing to the bloc's landmark Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which sets harmonized rules for the crypto sector across all 27 member states. Once MiCA is fully in place, every EU country will fall under the same unified regime.

A market as big as the U.S.

"In terms of total addressable market, [the EU] is as big as the U.S.," Kerbrat told CNBC, adding that "it's definitely an interesting market for us."

Expansion through the Bitstamp acquisition

The transfer launch is part of a broader overseas push. In June 2024, Robinhood announced that it would acquire Bitstamp, a Luxembourg-based crypto platform, in a deal valued at approximately $200 million in cash and set to close in the first half of 2025. According to Kerbrat, the acquisition will help Robinhood gain access to even more international markets and obtain coveted regulatory permissions around the world: Bitstamp holds over 50 licenses and registrations globally, including in Singapore, the U.K. and the EU.

The deal is also expected to help Robinhood diversify its crypto business toward institutional investors. Bitstamp offers a "crypto-as-a-service" product that helps banks and other financial firms launch their own crypto capabilities.

Regulatory backdrop

The EU rollout comes at a time when U.S. crypto firms are sparring with regulators at home. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued several companies — including Coinbase, Binance and Ripple — over claims that they are dealing in unregistered securities. Each of the platforms has contested the SEC's allegations, maintaining that the tokens marketed and sold on them do not qualify as securities that should be registered with the agency.

"We are disappointed by the way U.S. regulation is happening, where it's basically regulation by enforcement," Kerbrat told CNBC. At the federal level, Robinhood is regulated by the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA); it also holds a BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services.