How to use Robinhood, the popular app rumored to be worth $5.6 billion that lets you trade stocks and cryptocurrencies without paying any fees

Robinhood stock trading app

Robinhood is an app built around one promise: no-fee stock and cryptocurrency trading.

The app first launched in December 2014 and quickly became a favorite among younger people looking to invest. It allows users the freedom to complete a transaction without paying a processing fee, and became the first finance app to win an Apple Design Award thanks to its simple-but-stylish design.

In short: It makes stock trading cheap, intuitive, and mobile, which is apparently exactly what young investors were looking for. It began as invite-only, and by the time it opened to the public in March 2015, the waitlist rose above 700,000 according to Fortune. By November of that year, TechCrunch reported that it had facilitated over $1 billion in transactions.

Three years later, it's on the brink of completing yet another funding round, at the end of which it could be valued at $5.6 billion — more than four times its 2017 valuation of $1.3 billion. This spike could be attributed to its recent decision to expand into cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin), which have had a lot of market success themselves.

Here's what it's like using Robinhood, the app that wants to democratize stock trading.

This is what the Robinhood icon looks like on an iPhone.

The sign up process doesn't take long. It automatically prompts you to sign up with your email address, and then asks you a series of questions.

It used to give you the option to sign up with Touch ID, but I don't see that option on there anymore.

After you sign up with email, it asks you to create a password (at least 10 characters), and then you have to share some personal information: your legal name, email address, phone number, date of birth, residential address (U.S. law apparently requires that brokerages collect this information), citizenship, and social security number.

It also asks you how much investment experience you have. I selected None. Then a few more questions about your employer and ties to companies or brokerages, review, and submit.

The whole process took only a few minutes.