Financial service startup that aims to make investing approachable for beginners Stash is adding crypto to its set of products it offers its 2 million users.
With a valuation of $1.4 billion, Co-founder and president of Stash Ed Robinson disclosed in an interview that the company sees itself as being different from its competitors because of its focus on cultivating customers who are long-term investors rather than encouraging more frequent, riskier trading for short-term profits.
Deposits on the platform have grown tremendously with a 30% increase over the past year, also having nearly $3 billion in assets under management today.
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Speaking on its latest crypto offering, the company’s co-founder disclosed that the firm is sticking with what he describes as a “curated approach” which will allow customers to buy and sell eight different cryptocurrencies on the platform which includes Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Chainlink, Ethereum, Avalanche, Ethereum Classic, Solana and Uniswap.
In his words, “We’re not doing a wholesale approach of listing hundreds or thousands of cryptocurrencies on the platform. It’s this very small curated list with education and guardrails around it, and we believe that we’re offering to our customers the more established cryptocurrencies that have a longer-term use case associated with them”.
He further stated that the company’s crypto offering has been in the works for over a year, adding that Stash has no immediate plans to widen the list of digital currencies offered because it wants to maintain its focus on what it sees as high-quality assets.
He contrasted Stash’s approach with that of other crypto investment platforms, saying: “It’s not about making a quick buck off the transactional revenue. 80% of our revenue comes through the subscription fee of $3 a month or $9 a month.
“In those tiers, you get access to all the investment products, personal retirement accounts for your kids, you get a banking product to get access to stock back rewards and you get life insurance.”
With Stash’s new crypto offering, customers won’t be able to store their crypto in a wallet but will be able to buy and sell the assets 24/7, much like on an app like Coinbase
The company stated that a crypto wallet launch is not necessarily out of the question in the future. For the time being, the company is partnering with Apex Crypto as its custodian.
The Stash app will show pop-ups to customers each time they attempt to make a crypto transaction, showing them what percent of their overall portfolio is at play.
It will also make recommendations to customers about what percentage of crypto they should hold in their portfolios based on a risk tolerance survey they answer when joining the platform. Investors on Stash also will have to go through a mandatory training on the platform before interacting with crypto.