Hey Steemit!

Day three for me on here and i'm still Steeming away!

I just wanted to give my views on the latest news rocking the headlines that Robin Hood has registered a million eager users.

Many people are taking this as a confirmation that Crypto is going to blow up in February when trading is live on Robin Hood.

I've even seen people use the rational that if every user put $1,000 then that's $1bn of new capital so...BUY BUY BUY...to which I just facepalmed so hard i nearly knocked myself out.

Aliens & Poachers are why I don't believe the hype...

Some of you may be thinking...what the hell do Aliens & Poachers have to do with Crypto? Do I have to put on my tin foil hat now? Should I get out my Green Peace t-shirt and join a protest? No...just hear me out...

Robin Hood has been able to register over a million people to trade Crypto. Just for perspective Binance, currently ranked as the top exchange by volume, has 3 million users... that's no small feat! Cheers to Robin Hood!

That one million number though is very misleading though and heres why...

Aliens

Literally ANYONE can register for early access as long as they have a functioning email address. So your grandma with her dial-up connection from the 90's or the Aliens orbiting Neptune in their flying saucer could go on Google and sign up to that list.

Why does this matter? Two reasons:

• Robin Hood only accepts users who are in the US to trade (check here to see the requirements.)
  • However when you "register" for access...ANYONE can - they don't even put a check box saying "please tick to confirm you are a US citizen". So of those million registered...how many are actually US based? And how many people simply read some "zero fee" headline and then clicked through to register without reading the fine print that states you need to be a US citizen? I'll let you decide
• As there is literally next to zero vetting its possible there is the issue of double counting as well as bots manipulating the numbers
  • It is possible that one individual may be signing up using multiple email address which inflates the number of users registered
  • Also they don't have that annoying CAPTHA thing to verify you're actually a human and not some bot who is filling out the form automatically...for all we know a decent chunk of those signups are bot related

Poachers

Of those million registered how many of them are genuinely new users which represent fresh money cough blood cough coming into the Crypto space vs. an existing user who is looking to add another exchange to trade on?

It makes sense that actually most of the sign-ups are existing Crypto traders / investors who are probably fed up with Coinbase's (CB) extortionate fees. These existing CB users most likely now plan to migrate their trading to Robin Hood's platform.

Why? Because they are advertising it as ZERO FEE...now if Robin Hood compensate for this by widening the spread that's a different story all together and not in scope for discussion here. But the point still stands...you advertise something as "Zero Fee" and every Crypto trader and their mother will be interested. So it's likely a majority of the volumes going to Robin Hood will be recycled vs. new money.

From a "numbers" point of view - CB has 13m users. To see 7% (1m) of the CB user base think "F&£@k Coin Base" (as I probably do once a day) and sign up to a similar offering by a competitor isn't a crazy notion.

In effect Robin Hood is just poaching users from CB's existing user base with only a minority being the treasured sparkly eyed crypto-noobs seeking Lambo's an rocket ships to the moon which everyone is hoping for.

So when you do a bit of digging you can see that (1) that one million number is over inflated and (2) doesn't represent a large chunk of new money coming into the system but represents a shift in trading volume from currently existing exchanges to Robin Hood.

Conclusion

Full disclosure i'm super bullish on Crypto and I think we will see ALOT of new money in the space over the long term. I just don't believe that Robin Hood is going to be the catalyst that sparks the main stream adoption because they've been able to get a million people to express interest in a ZERO FEE Crypto exchange...it's ZERO FEE! Which existing Crypto trader wouldn't want that?

As always feel free to comment below I love feedback and people's opinions.

Have a good evening everyone!

Crypto Dino