Robinhood, the online brokerage best known for its role in the 2021 meme-stock craze, and Jump Crypto, one of the industry’s most well-known market makers, are reportedly no longer in business together.
On-chain data suggests that the two stopped their partnership in early July, according to CoinDesk, which spoke with a source familiar with Robinhood and Jump Crypto to confirm the split. Market makers provide liquidity, or a willing trade partner, for those buying and selling stocks or cryptocurrencies on exchanges.
A spokesperson for Robinhood declined to comment on the report. Jump Crypto did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by Coins2Day.
The split between Robinhood, which allows users to buy and sell more than 10 cryptocurrencies on its platform, and Jump Crypto is just one of several recent moves from the online brokerage to distance itself from digital assets and crypto companies targeted in a recent flurry of lawsuits from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In June, the SEC sued Binance and then Coinbase in blockbuster lawsuits against two of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. The SEC contends that both exchanges offer a list of cryptocurrencies deemed by the agency as unregistered securities. The SEC singled out some of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, including Polygon (MATIC), Cardano (ADA), and Solana (SOL).
In response, Robinhood delisted MATIC, ADA, and SOL, a move that a number of other legacy fintech firms replicated, including eToro and Revolut.
In May, Jump Crypto was reported to be pulling back from the U.S. Amid the government’s crackdown on crypto. Less than a week later, the agency alleged in court filings that the firm made more than $1 billion in May 2021 when the supposedly algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD depegged from the U.S. Dollar and Jump Crypto swooped in to back the token.
Do Kwon, the founder of TerraUSD, has since received an SEC lawsuit and indictment from the Justice Department after his stablecoin collapsed in 2022.
