Robinhood Says 1.6 Million People Now on Crypto Wallet Waitlist

Robinhood Markets now has 1.6 million people on the waitlist for its cryptocurrency wallet, up from 1 million just a few weeks ago, Christine Brown, chief operating officer of Robinhood, said on Tuesday.

The retail broker's crypto wallet, which will allow its users to move supported digital currencies in and out of their brokerage accounts, is on track to be launched late in the first quarter of 2022, Brown said at a conference held by Decrypt and Yahoo Finance.

Earlier this week, Robinhood warned users that a hacker broke past the app's defences, stealing millions of user email addresses and more.

The culprit called customer support and, pretending to be an authorized party, duped a Robinhood employee into providing access to the customer support computer system, a hacker technique referred to as "social engineering," the company said in a blog post.

After stealing information from Robinhood, the hacker tried to extort payment from the company, which opted to alert police and warn users about the breach, according to the post.

"We owe it to our customers to be transparent and act with integrity,” Robinhood chief security officer Caleb Sima said in the post.

"Following a diligent review, putting the entire Robinhood community on notice of this incident now is the right thing to do."

The breach took place late on November 3, with the hacker snatching about five million email addresses for Robinhood users, along with the names of about two million other members of the investment service, according to the company.