Why Christine Brown Left Robinhood for an NFT App

Robinhood has had a unstable journey within the crypto enterprise.

The fast-swipe inventory buying and selling app launched in 2013, and did not add crypto for 5 years. It began with Bitcoin and Ethereum buying and selling solely in February 2018, then in July added Litecoin, Bitcoin Money, and Dogecoin—and bought main blowback for the latter. (All through the crypto surge of 2021, DOGE was a drug for Robinhood till it grew to become an albatross.)

Since then it has added Bitcoin SV, Ethereum Basic, Compound, Polygon, Solana, and Shiba Inu, bringing the variety of complete supported cash to 11.

Christine Brown was there for all of it. The previous Googler joined Robinhood in 2017, earlier than it had ever touched crypto, then grew to become its first Crypto COO in Might 2021 and grew the crypto workforce from 5 individuals to 100 in a single 12 months.

Robinhood Crypto Lead Christine Brown Leaving to Begin Crypto Enterprise

On the finish of March, she left the corporate, and is now a co-founder and COO of Ground, an NFT portfolio monitoring app that introduced an $8 million seed spherical this week.

Robinhood has definitely had its share issues, together with a hideous 56% inventory drop this 12 months, however many would possibly nonetheless marvel why an govt would depart a publicly traded monetary companies firm with a $6.5 billion market cap for an NFT app.

Brown explains the leap on Decrypt‘s newest gm podcast, saying she’s left a spot that purely companies monetary investing for an business that she believes is about much more than that.
“I feel lots of people see a really small a part of the NFT house right now, they usually suppose, ‘Oh, it represents speculative buying and selling or monetary positions.’ That’s the place you would possibly see some overlap with the Robinhood model,” Brown stated. “However I feel NFTs will really energy an immense variety of use circumstances, from issues that we already know corresponding to artwork, tickets memberships, to issues that we do not know but.

“We’re so early, and there is a lot that may be constructed on prime of this preliminary use case, that to me it really feels a lot larger than simply an funding car, which is the place Robinhood’s focus was,” she added.

Brown stated she’s all in on NFTs, and invokes the favored comparability of We3 to the very early days of the web, with the picks and shovels nonetheless being constructed and offered, and skeptics nonetheless unable to see the big-picture coming down the road.

“If you’d have advised these preliminary builders I’d use this to get a cab to take me someplace, and I would not have to really hail it, I would not should pay for it with money, they may be slightly bit shocked that that is what they have been constructing for on the time,” Brown stated. “And I feel that’s what we’ll see with NFTs as effectively.”

In touting the potential of NFTs, Brown additionally introduced up Dogecoin, and Robinhood’s tumultuous expertise with DOGE buying and selling on its app final 12 months.

“Dogecoin had a second final 12 months on Robinhood’s platform, and lots of people have been like, ‘It is a meme coin. Why assist it? Why commerce it? It is a unhealthy factor for crypto general,'” Brown stated. “And I really suppose it bought a foul rap, and in lots of methods doesn’t get the credit score it deserves for serving to onboard individuals into the house.

She continued: “Dogecoin, on the time, made it very easy for individuals to be like, ‘Yeah, that is for me. It is a coin with a canine on it, and I can begin with $1, and I can simply strive it out and see what occurs and dip my toe in and go from there.’ And I feel in lots of methods NFTs are that, however on a a lot grander, larger scheme, as a result of it does have extra use circumstances past simply monetary hypothesis.”

Brown additionally named her favourite NFT collections and gave her predictions for what’s going to occur subsequent within the crowded NFT house in addition to the competitors between exchanges like Coinbase and FTX and fintech apps like Robinhood, PayPal, and Sq..

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