- Robinhood now holds $25 million in Bitcoin on its own balance sheet.
- Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s head of crypto, said the purchase was about aligning with the crypto community, and played down its size for a company worth around $100 billion.
- Most of Robinhood’s crypto push is going into perps, Robinhood Chain and tokenized stocks
Robinhood now holds Bitcoin on its own books and is among a growing list of BTC treasury companies. News that the trading platform had bought $25 million worth of BTC for its corporate balance sheet, its first such purchase, came out today when Robinhood’s senior vice president and general manager of crypto and international, Johann Kerbrat disclosed the buy in an interview on The Block’s The Starting Block. Kerbrat made the announcement on the same day he was speaking at Token2049 in Singapore.
Kebrat made it clear about why the company made the purchase. He told The Block that the reason was to line up the company’s vision with the crypto community. He was just as quick to play down the size of the purchase. With Robinhood valued at around $100 billion, he said the position is “not going to change a lot of the current trajectory of the company”.
The Bitcoin Buy Is About 0.025% of Robinhood’s Market Cap
Robinhood shares closed at $112 on Tuesday, leaving the company with a marketcap of roughly $100 billion. The new Bitcoin holding works out to about 0.025% of that. The buy is also smaller than what Strategy picked up last week alone. Michael Saylor’s firm bought 334 BTC for about $28.7 million between September 28 and October 4, taking its total holdings to 848,000 BTC.
Compared with what sits on Robinhood’s platform, the gap gets wider still. According to data from Arkham, the company holds 185,232K BTC, valued at $15.57 billion, in custody for customers. At least for now, this latest news reads more like a gesture to crypto users than a treasury strategy.
The Real Crypto Spending Is Going Into Perps and Robinhood Chain
Robinhood’s heavier commitments to crypto sit on the product side. Last week, the company said eligible U.S. users will be able to trade perpetual futures in the coming months, going long or short on BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, ADA, LINK and HYPE. CEO Vlad Tenev called it “a new chapter for U.S. derivatives” in a post on X.
Robinhood Chain, the layer 2 built on Arbitrum’s tech stack, went live on mainnet in July. Its total value locked stood at $1.05 billion as of Tuesday, per DefiLlama. Kerbrat has pointed to the platform’s 28 million funded accounts, 27 million of them in the U.S., as distribution few L2s can match.
Tokenized stocks are growing fast enough to bump against regulation. In a separate interview with The Block last week, Kerbrat said Stock Token volume is already high enough to hit the caps set under the SEC’s innovation exemption for tokenized U.S. equities.
Bitcoin Trades Near $84,000 as the Purchase Lands
The timing comes during a rough patch for the market. Bitcoin briefly slipped below $84,000 on Oct. 6 as long liquidations across crypto climbed to $487 million, and is trading near $84K currently.
A $25 million buy will not move the price on its own. What matters more is whether Robinhood comes back for more. Repeat purchases on a set schedule, or a policy that ties buys to crypto revenue, would put the company in a different category from where it sits today. For now, the custody book and the product roadmap say a lot more about Robinhood’s crypto exposure than its balance sheet does.
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Disclaimer. The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. We strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.
Anush Jafer
Anush is a crypto research analyst and journalist with four years of experience in the industry. He covers stablecoins, on-chain analysis, regulatory developments and macro-driven crypto narratives. He also hosts Cryptopolitan’s live market streams and podcasts.
