USD
Robinhood Adds $25 Million in Bitcoin to Balance Sheet
Purchase accompanies a wider push into perps, tokenized stocks and Robinhood Chain
TL;DR
- Robinhood added $25 million worth of Bitcoin to its balance sheet, according to senior vice president Johann Kerbrat.
- Kerbrat said the investment is intended to align Robinhood more closely with the crypto community rather than materially change its financial trajectory.
- Robinhood is also expanding into U.S. perpetual futures, tokenized stocks and Robinhood Chain, which reached $1.05 billion in total value locked.
Trade smarter on Jupiter, Solana’s leading DEX built for fast execution and deep liquidity.
Swap tokens at competitive rates, route across multiple liquidity sources automatically, and access perpetuals, DCA, and advanced trading tools — all in one place!
Robinhood has added $25 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to its balance sheet as part of a broader effort to strengthen its alignment with the crypto sector, according to Johann Kerbrat, the company's senior vice president and general manager of crypto and international. Kerbrat disclosed the purchase during The Starting Block at the Digital Asset Summit Asia conference on Wednesday, Oct. 7.
“We care deeply about Bitcoin and the ecosystem around it,” Kerbrat said. “For us, it's more aligning our company and our vision with the crypto community.”
Kerbrat characterized the investment as small relative to Robinhood's overall size. “Robinhood is a massive company at this point, with a market cap in the $100 billion [range]. So the $25 million worth of Bitcoin is not going to change a lot of the current trajectory of the company,” he said. Robinhood's Nasdaq-listed shares closed Tuesday down 1.85% at $112, putting its market capitalization at roughly $100 billion.
Robinhood had not separately confirmed the purchase.
Robinhood expands its crypto business
Robinhood's balance-sheet purchase comes alongside an expansion of its crypto products. Last week, the company announced plans to introduce perpetual futures trading in the coming months for eligible U.S. users, allowing long or short positions on BTC, Ether (ETH), Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, ADA, LINK and HYPE.
“Robinhood is bringing America its first true perps. No expiry, with P&L settled every 15 minutes,” CEO Vlad Tenev said on X, calling the planned product a “new chapter for U.S. derivatives.”
Robinhood Chain is another part of that expansion. The Layer 2, built using Arbitrum's technology stack, went live on public mainnet in July and had reached $1.05 billion in total value locked as of Tuesday. Robinhood has also launched Stock Tokens that eligible users can trade 24/7 directly on the network.
Robinhood Chain is Ethereum-compatible and focused on tokenized real-world assets and decentralized finance. Since mainnet launched, the network has added tokenized stock products, the USDG stablecoin and yield-bearing lending through Robinhood Earn, while integrating Uniswap and infrastructure from Chainlink, Alchemy and BitGo.
“We have 28 million funded accounts on the platform: 27 million in the U.S., and 1 million outside of the U.S. We also have our Robinhood wallet, which is the official wallet for Robinhood Chain, available in 120 plus countries,” Kerbrat said. “So this is probably the first time that an L2 is connected to such a large distribution.”
Kerbrat also said in a separate interview last week that Robinhood's stock-token activity is already approaching limits contained in the Securities and Exchange Commission's innovation exemption for tokenized U.S. equities.
“We're still trying to understand all the parameters of it,” Kerbrat said. “There are limitations on the volume, and what type of assets we can tokenize. If you look at our volume on our stock tokens, it's already pretty high and will hit some of its limits.”
Public companies continue adding Bitcoin
Robinhood joins a broader group of publicly traded companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Strategy said Monday that it bought another 334 BTC for roughly $28.7 million at an average purchase price of $85,838.80 between Sept. 28 and Oct. 4, taking its holdings to 848,000 BTC.
Strategy began its Bitcoin treasury strategy in 2020 and that more than 170 companies worldwide now follow the approach. Tesla, Block, MARA Holdings, CleanSpark and Riot Platforms are among corporate holders, with companies collectively holding well over 1.2 million BTC on their balance sheets.
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
