To get rich or die trying
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Before this becomes a crypto thread itās probably best to take the conversation to the correct place
https://community.freetrade.io/t/feature-request-crypto-support-on/16204/585
This thread should be for whinging about FT not having some feature that you feel they should have prioritised to the detriment everything else /s
If offering crypto is part of the goal then providing wallet and key support is a must. Seeing as FT is all about providing opportunities for safe and long term investing, offering crypto without that goes against it completely.
Coinbase fees are actually quite cheap if you buy on coinbase pro. Just fund your account and send it over to coinbase pro. A lot of people are still unaware of this. Also if you buy with PayPal you donāt have ownership over your coins, PayPal does.
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Iām still surprised that many of the āsophisticated investorsā that complain about Coinbase fees, donāt know about Coinbase pro.
I donāt day trade shares, but with coinbase pro, I do dabble in the fluctuations of the ETH/BTC ratio, something that can only be done because of the small fees.
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The rate should be 0.50%-1%
Moving on from crypto.
One thing Iād genuinely like to see is proxy voting in company and AGMs etc.
Iāve had people say, ādo you really think your vote on 20 shares in Ā£ULVR or 15 shares in $PG will make much differenceā.
I say probably not.
But itās nice to be asked and it forms part of the overall shareholder experience.
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Me too and I also agree the software improvements on the app are very very slow. I have over 50k in my FT plus account portfolio and I want specific changes that wouldnāt take long to make.
Someone needs to get their dev teams in some sprints, get the devs on some tickets and start churning out some work. Itās like thr app has stood still in 6 months. This sounds harsh but it is true.
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Also I feel that if FT ever does add crypto, it should prioritise things related to stocks first.
Proxy voting, UK REITs in ISAs, and nationality declaration stocks should absolutely come first in the priority list in my book. EU expansion as well (which I know is underway).
Iāve reluctantly, and very reluctantly at that, come to accept the fact that one day freetrade may add crypto support. But please get the basics in regards to stocks looked after first.
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Donāt forget JISA, LISA & Autopilots
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Maybe the Dev Ops team need to be fully open in regards to where they are at.
I know this has been a large critique of Trading 212.
Some say itās the fact itās run by Bulgarians and many suspect there is a cultural difference between what might be seen as good customer service (communication) in Bulgaria and the UK*.
*These are the observations of other people by the way.
Ocra which Iām a member of can be pretty slow on communication from the Dev Ops team as well.
Some are definitely worse than freetrade for communication from the Dev Ops team, but freetrade could also improve as well.
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I think the main problem here is that Freetrade was unexpectedly swamped at the beginning of the year due to memestocks so had to redirect resources towards support and infra (the latter being invisible to the end user). Everything would have been put on hold for at least a month or two. And this is not to mention remote work adjustments.
Simultaneously however, it has been clear for a while now that the Freetrade has had at least some growing pains in terms of engineering, and the quest to find a CTO didnāt pan out as planned. Hopefully this has simmered and a good structure is in place.
As CTO of a comparable startup at a later stage of growth and profitability, two things stand out to me: firstly, the seeming inability to multitask on a broad scale engineering-wise, and related; the quest for perfection.
To get the multitasking aspect out of the way: Marketing-wise, there is no issue here. Support has been coming together also. This is strictly in terms of engineering. Freetrade is a private company and it is unclear from outsiders (including shareholders big or small) the human resources available. In terms of engineering, we could be 5 developers strong or we could be 50. As described above, a lot of work on code and infra is invisible. But it has become painstakingly clear to those of us who follow Freetrade closely that groups (or worse, the majority) of developers are working together with one single goal/focus, from one huge project to the next. From my point of view, the platform is a little early in its lifecycle to commit to a waterfall-type workflow, when the team should be sprinting towards goals one hurdle at a time, tackling smaller projects as individuals, using tests in place of QA to ensure universal operability, and releasing early versions of the bigger vision.
Concerning the quest for perfection: it is a noble one. No director wants to demo a shoddy product, no Chief of Marketing wants its users to have a less-than-wow onboarding experience, and no Chief of Design wants a less than round corner with a less than 25% alpha gaussian blur drop shadow. But to be a startup is to move rapidly at the expense of perfection. It is to seek stopgap solutions which roughly match the bigger visions, to be fleshed out or completely overhauled along the line. When it comes to bugs and imperfections, users (including late adopters) are extremely forgiving ā in some cases, scarily so. Earlier in my career I had the pleasure and privilege to work alongside the man who is now CEO of Japanās biggest pre-exit unicorn. He always repeated the phrase: āDone is better than perfect.ā It got annoying to hear it repeated, but he consistently delivered exceptional results which led to massive company-wide growth. These words are now gospel to me, and I hope others can learn from them too.
Peering through the window from the outside, Freetrade appears to be a marketing-first company. At this stage however it feels that Freetrade should be an engineering-first company. Or at least half way between the two. I hope that into the New Year we inch closer to that.
Ultimately, I am not Adam Dodds and I respect the Freetrade mission and journey. These are just my two cents. Things have come so far and I applaud the team and leadership for its efforts and achievements.
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Great post 
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It sounds like Freetrade wants to make all the many improvements which people want but the problems is trying to please everyone all of the time as well as international launches and crypto is nigh on impossible.
You only have to look at the careers page Careers on Freetrade and the number of vacancies they have. Trying to atrract the best talent in the middle of a pandemic surely canāt be easy.
Good post @heytokyo much of what you say resonates with me too as a (former) CTO of a startup and someone who has led work across global teams in a number of companies.
One additional thing that I will add is that there some people who come on here and say āI think X should happenā. They donāt consider the fact that their X might be of zero interest to many people and/or may directly conflict with other goals (be those design or otherwise). They also donāt consider that they may have started investing in the past Z days and they may stop investing in another three. To put it bluntly their idea might actually be rubbish even if a handful of people on this forum say āme tooā.
There is an article that I cut out from the Sunday Times Money section 14 of November titled āwhat became of the lockdown share tradersā. It gives some fascinating numbers and insight into change in behaviour (e.g. how at etoro there was a peak of 210 million share trades in the first three months this year and that dropped to 127 million in the next three months. ā¦ still more than double the first three months 2020). The wild swings in share trading and the overall increase has a consequence on all of these companies including the gorilla in the arena. Now imagine growing up in this era. And if you have worked at a startup you will really understand.
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I think the expectations increase with the valuation of the company and the amount of the money that FT raiseā¦
With a valuation of Ā£650m people are expecting much more than with valuation of Ā£140mā¦
This is very true - we all have our preferences, wants and needs for this investment product but just a simple filter of this forum by āIdeasā ā āMost Votesā shows that the features some people are seemingly desperate for donāt even make it into the top ten of this forum.
We have to remember that as forum users we are a tiny group of people heavily invested in Freetrade as a product. All my friends and family who use FT couldnāt care less wether or not the app has been updated in the last week or the last six months.
As long as they donāt discover that someone is doing it better and cheaper out there itās a non existent issue.
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The one friend who I managed to persuade to sign up to Freetrade over 2 years ago was a first time investor. She is not on the forum and gets her info about the app from me (if she asks) and from marketing emails.
To her, Freetrade is already the complete and finished product, so any new stuff which comes out in the future is just a bonus.
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I think there is a difference in customer.
I think the novice 1st time investor will generally be happy with whatever freetrade offers as, donāt take this the wrong way, they are just finding their feet and getting Thier feet wet when it comes to the world of investing.
We all have to start somewhere, donāt we 
However those of us who consider ourselves to have reached at least an intermediate level in our investing journey will be unlikely to be satisfied with what we may perceive as stagnation.
I link back to a customer service chat back at Orca. I find they appear to be in an endless loop of ācoming soonā what has received heavy critique from both myself and others on an investment discord I am part of.
This I do believe is the fundamental difference.
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