Robinhood給了老式股票經紀商一個賺錢的機會：零手續費進行任何交易，無論是蘋果公司的股票還是比特幣，但這并不意味著這家初創企業本身一定會盈利。

Robinhood目前價值56億美元，在私營金融科技行業中排名第二，而400多萬的用戶量讓它略壓“老大哥”E*Trade一頭，后者截至5月末的用戶數量為390萬。Robinhood的聯合首席執行官維拉德·特內夫告訴《財富》雜志，今年2月推出加密貨幣交易推動了用戶增長——Robinhood Crypto上線后的爆發期內，每天都會新增20多萬名用戶。

但和依然可以盈利的零傭金股票交易不同，Robinhood基本上是在免費贈送加密貨幣交易服務。

在《財富》雜志最新一期的加密貨幣和金融科技周播節目《Balancing the Ledger》中，特內夫說：“我們不打算在可預見的時間里借此賺很多錢。我們的計劃是把這項業務做的收支平衡。”

這和推特的首席執行官杰克·多爾西創立的支付公司Square的情況很相似。今年早些時候，Square在自己的應用程序Cash上推出了手續費為零的比特幣交易服務。上個月Square披露，此項服務運營一個季度后，該公司通過比特幣買賣僅獲利22.3萬美元。

剛剛起步的加密貨幣行業缺乏做市商，Square和Robinhood等其他交易平臺通常都直接在公開的加密貨幣交易所買入比特幣等加密貨幣，然后將其賣給投資者，同時寄希望于借買賣差價牟利。但這很難實現，特別是在加密貨幣的高波動性造成其價格頻繁震蕩的情況下。

特內夫和另一位聯合首席執行官拜朱·巴哈特認為這沒什么，他們把加密貨幣（Robinhood目前支持比特幣和以太坊交易）視為新手參與較傳統資產交易的敲門磚，而較傳統的資產交易可以帶來較高的利潤率。

特內夫說：“這背后的思路是我們真正的工作是建立一個生態系統。目前的產品是投資型的，所以加密貨幣可以跟其他一萬多種人們可以交易的投資工具非常好的共存?！?

Robinhood的股票業務利潤較高，因為它賺錢的途徑是把股票借給做空方（即希望在股價下跌時賺錢的投資者），進而收取手續費。它還通過現金存款獲取利息，并提供高端訂閱服務Robinhood Gold，后者具有保證金交易等更先進的功能。

特內夫認為傭金是歷史遺留物，來自于電子交易出現以前，在現代社會中已無立足之地，因為普通券商的主要開支只剩下數據中心、網絡和基礎設施的運營和維護費，這和許多公司每筆交易5-10美元的手續費相差甚遠。

特內夫說：“成本基本上已經降到零。所以我們的方法是借助技術和自動化把這些交易的絕大多數價值放回到用戶的口袋里?！?

他指出，Robinhood希望今后能把這樣的哲學擴展到目前的經紀-交易業務以外，最好能像美國銀行那樣提供各種各樣的服務，甚至更多。

“我覺得這不光限于投資型產品。在整個金融服務領域里，消費者都處于被壓榨的地位?！?

特內夫還說，加密貨幣也是如此。Robinhood已經開始追蹤16種加密貨幣的價格和市場數據，包括萊特幣、瑞波幣和Zcash，而且可能很快就會為這些加密貨幣提供交易支持。

他指出：“我們確實打算擴大今后的業務范圍，把其他加密貨幣包括進來。”但Robinhood正在謹慎推進此事，而且會把監管部門的指導意見考慮在內，以便判斷這些加密貨幣會不會成為非法證券。

特內夫說，Robinhood還在仔細辨別其他因素，比如“這個加密貨幣背后的團隊在干什么？他們合法嗎？他們有什么樣的背景？”同時，該公司還要考慮這些加密貨幣的穩定性和防黑客能力?！氨热鐜字芮搬槍Ρ忍貛劈S金（Bitcoin Gold）的51%攻擊，那真是讓人大開眼界?！保ㄘ敻恢形木W）

譯者：Charlie

審校：夏林

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Robinhood is giving old-fashioned stock brokers a run for their money by offering no-fee trading on everything from Apple stock to Bitcoin—but that doesn’t mean the startup itself necessarily makes money.

Currently worth $5.6 billion, Robinhood is the second most valuable private fintech company and boasts more than 4 million customer accounts, edging out its older rival E*Trade, which had 3.9 million at the end of May. It helped that Robinhood launched cryptocurrency trading in February: More than 200,000 new customers per day signed up during a surge following the launch of Robinhood Crypto, the company’s co-CEO, Vlad Tenev, tells Fortune.

Yet unlike zero-commission stock trading, which can still be profitable, Robinhood is basically giving crypto trading away for free.

“We don’t intend to make very much money on it at all for the foreseeable future,” Tenev says on the latest episode of “Balancing the Ledger,” Fortune’s weekly show about cryptocurrency and fintech. “We intend to operate it as a breakeven business.”

That’s not so different from the experience of Square, the payments company founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, which began offering no-fee Bitcoin trading through its Cash app earlier this year. Last month, Square reported it made just $223,000 more selling the Bitcoin than it paid to buy it over the first quarter of sales.

With a dearth of market makers in the nascent cryptocurrency industry, Square and other trading platforms like Robinhood typically buy their Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies straight from public crypto exchanges and then resell them to investors, hoping to profit on the spread, or difference, between the purchase and sale price. But that can be tricky, especially when cryptocurrency’s high volatility results in frequent price swings.

That doesn’t matter to Tenev and his co-CEO Baiju Bhatt, who see cryptocurrency—Robinhood currently offers trading in both Bitcoin and Ethereum—as an entree for newbies into trading other more traditional assets on which it reaps higher margins.

“The thinking behind that is what we’re really doing is building an ecosystem,” Tenev says. “Right now the products are investing products, so crypto slots in very nicely alongside the 10,000 plus other instruments that people can trade.”

Robinhood’s stock business is more lucrative, as it makes money by lending shares out to short-sellers (investors who seek to make money when stock prices decline), charging the borrowers for the privilege. The company also collects interest on cash deposits, and offers a premium subscription service Robinhood Gold with more advanced functions such as margin trading.

Tenev believes commission fees are a relic of the past, left over from the days before electronic trading existed, and no longer have a place in the modern world where a typical brokerage’s main expenses are down to operating and maintaining its data centers, networks and infrastructure—a drop in the bucket compared to the $5 to $10 many charge per trade.

“The cost has gone to essentially zero,” Tenev says. “So our approach is use technology and automation to put the vast majority of the value of that transaction back into customers’ pockets.”

In the future, Robinhood hopes to expand that philosophy beyond just its current structure as a broker-dealer, and ideally offer everything Bank of America currently provides—and more, Tenev says.

“I think it doesn’t stop with just investing products,” he says. “Customers are getting ripped off across the board in financial services.”

That includes cryptocurrency, he adds. Robinhood already tracks prices and market data for 16 different virtual currencies including Litecoin, Ripple and Zcash, and may soon allow trading in them too.

“We’re definitely looking to expand the future set and add more coins,” Tenev says. The company is proceeding cautiously, though, taking into account regulators’ guidance about whether certain cryptocurrencies may constitute illegal securities or not.

Robinhood is also looking carefully at factors such as, “What’s the team behind this coin doing? Are they legitimate, what are their backgrounds?” says Tenev, adding the company also takes account of a cryptocurrencies’ stability and resistance to hacks. “Like 51% attacks for instance, which we know happened to Bitcoin Gold a couple of weeks ago,” Tenev adds. “That was very eye-opening.”