Cryptocurrencies

SoFi Invest Adds Support For Crypto Trading

To the surprise of just about no one, the cryptocurrency ride continues to be a bit wild in 2019. Just this week or so the price of Bitcoin managed to fall below the important $10,000 level only to rebound a few days later. Nevertheless the growing popularity of crypto has various companies looking to make Bitcoin and others easier for everyday people to purchase and sell.  In that vein, today SoFi announced that it was launching its SoFi Crypto offering in beta, allowing customers to trade select tokens.

During this beta, invited users are only able to purchase three cryptocurrency types: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. However the interface allows additional assets such as Bitcoin Cash, XRP, 0x, Dogecoin, and several others to be added to users’ watchlists. Currently the minimum crypto purchase per transaction is $10 and customers must have available funds in their SoFi Invest account in order to purchase (added funds can take one to two business days to clear).

Although it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the email to customers, it would seem that SoFi Crypto is the result of a partnership with Coinbase. Back in February CNBC reported that the two FinTechs were working together to bring crypto buying to SoFi customers. At the time SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said, “Our target audience wants to see what the price of cryptocurrency is, and to buy it. They have a desire to do that and in many cases they already are.”

Of course SoFi is just the latest FinTech company to expand into crypto trading. Early last year, the commission-free stock trading app Robinhood announced their Robinhood Crypto platform and has continued to add support for various assets since. Looking outside of investment tools, the P2P payments app Square Cash has also offered users the ability to buy and sell Bitcoin. Most recently, Square also made it possible for users to deposit their Bitcoin on the app.

As for SoFi, SoFi Crypto is just one of new features the company has introduced since formally launching their SoFi Active Investing platform in February. Previously the company unveiled the ability for users to purchase partial shares — or “Stock Bits” — for selected stocks. Meanwhile, in addition to their Active Investing option, SoFi also offers Automated Investing via their roboadvisor and has also created several of their own ETFs available for trade.

It’s currently unclear when SoFi Crypto will expand beyond its beta. Similarly there’s no indication of when other assets will be tradable. Despite the lack of those details, it’s always nice to see cryptocurrency availability expanding — a trend that will hopefully continue regardless of how volatile such assets can be.

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