Crypto trading
Use the following steps to buy or sell crypto within your Robinhood account.
To help combat dramatic price moves, market orders are converted to limit orders with a collar of up to 1% for buy orders, and 5% for sell orders. This means that your order will not execute if the price of the crypto moves more than 5% lower than its price at the time you placed a market sell order, or more than 1% higher than its price when you placed a market buy order. Market orders that do not execute after 5 minutes may be automatically cancelled.
When you buy or sell crypto on Robinhood, we send your order to trading venues that allow you to receive competitive prices.
Robinhood sources liquidity from multiple venues to provide competitive market pricing. Robinhood does not disclose the names of our execution venues, but we use a variety of trading partners so that we are not solely dependent on a single venue for execution.
You do not have to buy full coins on Robinhood. You can place an order to buy or sell crypto at fractional amounts.
To help protect against potential price volatility, market orders are converted to limit orders with a price collar of up to 1% for buy orders, and 5% for sell orders. This means that your order will not execute if the price of the crypto moves more than 5% lower than its price at the time you placed a market sell order, or more than 1% higher than its price when you placed a market buy order.
Position limits refer to the maximum amount of a crypto that you can buy and hold with your Robinhood account. The position limit for all crypto is a maximum cost basis of $20,000,000 CAD per crypto. Position limits are subject to change at Robinhood’s discretion.
You can buy and hold up to the cost basis limit worth of a specific crypto. Note that the value of your crypto on Robinhood may exceed your position limits based on market fluctuations affecting crypto prices.
When you buy and sell crypto, orders will execute at the ask price when selling and the bid price when buying. The buy spread is the difference between the ask and mid prices, the sell spread is the difference between the bid and mid prices. Robinhood does not receive any portion of the spread.
Robinhood charges a 0.50% fee on the CAD value of the executed amount for all crypto. Pricing also includes a spread between the buy/sell quote and the market mid-price. Robinhood does not receive any portion of the spread. Review the Fee schedule for more information.
For buy orders, the total cost is equal to the notional value of the order (i.e., the CAD value of the coin amount) plus the fee. For sell orders, the total credit is equal to the notional value of the order minus the fee.
You can trade crypto 24/7 with your Robinhood account, with some exceptions, such as scheduled maintenance. We periodically schedule maintenance windows that can occur at different times, and might affect the timing of the trade.
Here are a few reasons why you may be having issues placing a buy order:
The price shown on a crypto detail page is the mid price, which is the midpoint of the bid and ask prices. When you are placing a market buy order, your order may execute at the ask price, which is higher than the mid price. When you are placing a market sell order, your order may execute at the bid price, which is lower than the mid price.
Crypto prices are volatile. To help protect your market orders against dramatic price moves, we adjust market orders to limit orders collared up to 1% for buy orders, and 5% for sell orders.
Any price difference you may see between the estimated buy or sell price and the execution price is due to market movement.
There are a few reasons why your crypto order may not be filled, such as: