Florida AG Investigates Robinhood Over Crypto Pricing Claims

The attorney -general James Uthmeier of Florida has started a Robinhood Crypto study, claiming that the popular trading platform has misled customers by incorrectly promoting itself as the least expensive way to buy digital assets.

“Robinhood has long claimed that it is the best bargain, but we believe that those representations were misleading,” said attorney -general James Uthmeier in one rack Wednesday.

The office has issued a summons for internal documents, claiming that Robinhood Crypto de Deceptive and Undable Trade Practices Act by Florida scores by giving potentially false cost representations to consumers.

“Crypto is an essential part of the financial future of Florida, and the efforts of President Trump to promote the crypto market will make America stronger and richer,” said Uthmeier.

The probe comes at a time when crypto regulations undergone an important shift under the Trump government, with the SEC recently Termination of investigations In numerous crypto companies, Including Robinhood itselfOnly a few months ago.

However, the state level research focuses specifically on consumer protection instead of federal securities violations.

The research focuses on Robinhood’s business model, which generates income by charging payment for order current instead of direct committees.

Under this structure, Robinhood customer routes to external companies that pay for the platform for the possibility of taking the opposite side of customer trade.

The Florida probe marks a renewed focus on the controversial payment of Robinhood for the ordering stream model, the same practice that one $ 65 million Sec fine in 2020 for not disclosing how it could lead to inferior trade performance for customers.

The agency of the AG said that although Robinhood brings itself to the market as offering the “lowest costs on average” for crypto -trade and promises customers “to deliver the most crypto for your money”, suggests proof that the trade on the platform can actually be more expensive than competitors because of the structure of the order power.

The summons, which requires a response before July 31, is looking for extensive documentation, including organizational maps, marketing material, training documents of employees and detailed data from all Florida user trade in 2024.

The request is also looking for documents that show how the platform determines the prices for transaction discounts, training material for staff who discuss crypto trading costs with users and records with regard to the sale or access of the data from the user’s cryptocurrency handling data.

“Ideally, every representation made by a company must be substantiated with credible evidence,” said Hargun Singh, Web3 lawyer and employee at Luthra and Luthra Law Offices India, said Decrypt.

“In this context, the summons of Robinhood Crypto seems to come from a great facie view that trade on his platform can in fact be more expensive than on competing platforms, which are directly contradicted to his marketing claims of the ‘cheapest costs’ option.’

To defend themselves against the allegations, Singh said that Robinhood should “provide substantive evidence to support its claims with regard to lower prices” and show transparency by displaying details about the “price method” and the “impact of payment for ordering current schemes on the implementation of crypto curses and prices for users.”

Robinhood is “unlikely that it succeeds in challenging the summons on jurisdiction rounds, because laws for consumer protection often have” extraterritorial applicability “when deceptive advertisements influence residents within a specific jurisdiction,” he said.

Robinhood was approached for comment.