Robinhood Launches Zero-Fee UK Crypto Trading With 50+ Coins

Robinhood UK Crypto Trading Starts Through Bitstamp

The practical change is that UK customers can place crypto trades without leaving the brokerage app they use for other products. Robinhood bought Bitstamp in 2025, and the UK launch now puts that exchange infrastructure directly behind its British retail offering.

It also delivers on a plan Robinhood flagged in July, when it said UK crypto trading was coming soon. Robinhood says crypto services in this launch are offered through Bitstamp UK, which is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a cryptoasset service provider.

The distinction between Robinhood’s brokerage authorization and the crypto service is important. The company says crypto held through Bitstamp UK is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or the Financial Ombudsman Service, so users should not treat exchange-held coins like a protected bank balance.

The entry comes after a softer crypto quarter for the company. Daily Crypto Briefs recently covered Robinhood’s Q2 crypto trading decline, making the UK rollout a meaningful new distribution channel but not evidence yet of a revenue rebound.

Zero Trading Fees Still Carry FX Costs

Robinhood says the product has no trading, custody or account-maintenance fees. That headline does not mean every conversion is cost-free: its disclosure says UK customers pay a 0.10% foreign-exchange fee, rising to 0.30% for conversions made from Friday 17:00 ET through Sunday 17:00 ET.

The fee structure is likely to be a central comparison point with UK platforms that charge a commission, a spread, an FX charge, or a combination of the three. Robinhood said the offer is intended as a lower-cost alternative to platforms using wider spreads, but it did not publish side-by-side execution-quality data or the final product terms for each coin.

The timing also adds a mainstream competitor to a market that is moving toward more formal product lanes. Coinbase’s UK MiFID authorization covers a different investment-services perimeter, including plans for derivatives and equities alongside crypto, while Robinhood’s announcement focuses on spot crypto access through Bitstamp UK.

The FCA’s cryptoasset guidance remains a useful dividing line for users: a firm’s registration or authorization does not remove crypto’s price risk, and the regulatory status of a service does not create FSCS cover for the underlying coins.

Cortex Digests Add AI Market Summaries

Robinhood is pairing the UK crypto rollout with Cortex Digests for Crypto, a generative-AI feature intended to explain price moves in individual assets using breaking news, market data, technical indicators and the firm’s own insights. The feature is context, not a trading recommendation.

Robinhood’s Cortex disclosure says the summaries are informational, not research or investment advice, and can draw on data from market and news sources. That limitation matters when the tool is describing highly volatile assets rather than executing a trade itself.

The company also pointed to its wider onchain expansion. It said Robinhood Chain, its Arbitrum-based Layer 2, had passed $18 billion in decentralized-exchange volume and $840 million in total value locked since its July 1 launch. Those figures were reported by Robinhood and are separate from the UK spot-crypto product.

Daily Crypto Briefs previously tracked Robinhood Chain’s mainnet launch, which centered on stock tokens and onchain infrastructure. Monday’s development is narrower and more immediate: a UK retail app is starting to offer direct crypto trading through a regulated local exchange entity.

Broader crypto sentiment remained cautious. Alternative.me’s Crypto Fear and Greed Index was 30, categorized as Fear, on Aug. 10.

The next check is the pace of customer access, the eventual full coin roster, and how Robinhood discloses spreads and execution alongside its stated fees. The confirmed development is the launch and this week’s rollout to eligible UK users, not a claim about how much new trading demand it will generate.