>while the risks involved with trading that money are substantial.

Also, presumably lots of people would rather put their beautiful minds towards things other than being anxious about how their savings are going. There is a lot to be said for just being able to park your money somewhere and not have to worry about it while you go live your life.

Most people won't think like that though, especially the millennial target customer who has the time to gamble money, rather than necessarily needing to save for retirement. Currently Robinhood takes three days to transfer funds, so reducing that friction, when customers make impulse decisions when they see that the stock is going up, is paramount. Why wait a few days when the money is already there? This is the benefit of vertical integration.

That's higher than index funds returns as of late.

Holding cash had higher returns than index funds over the last 6 months. That's not a high bar when the market is going down. VTI is below where it was 12 months ago.

I bought a decent chunk of VTI @ 133.00 this week, glad I had some roth contributions left

Greed.