Stealing from the poor, give to the rich

Stealing from millennials to give to the rich. Robinhood app sells user customer data to make a quick buck from the high-frequency trading (HFT) firms on Wall Street," that is what we wrote last month, in one of the first articles that expressed concern over the popular Robinhood investing app for millennials, which has shady ties to HFT firms and undermines its image of an anti-Wall Street ethos. Almost a month after our report, Bloomberg has now confirmed that more than 40% of Robinhood's revenues earlier this year were derived from selling its customers' orders to firms, like Citadel Securities and Two Sigma Securities. 

The cost of setting up trades is small, open banking API lowers the cost.  So, why not give everyone the code?  Why bother with a middleman like Robinhood?