>A Gold subscription lets users borrow up to double the money in their account to trade on margin with leverage
Users pay money to be loaned money? How is this different than a microloan service?
>Robinhood also earns money from rebates its gets for directing its order flow to broker dealers
That means, presumably, the dealers are profiting in some way by handling trades from investors less informed than themselves.
At the end of the day, Robinhood may not have trading fees, but the underlying brokers it works with do. I don't see how a microloans service and some kickbacks are enough to compensate. Presumably they are hemorrhaging money right now and the VC money is subsidizing novice investor's trading fees.
Despite the name "Robinhood" like this is giving money to the poor, this service seems extremely predatory to its users, offering them cheap loans to gamble with on the stock market and taking kickbacks from the exact type of people Robin Hood was stealing from.