Robinhood bought $25 million worth of Bitcoin and put it on its corporate balance sheet, according to Johann Kerbrat, the company’s senior vice president and general manager for crypto and international.
Kerbrat revealed the purchase in an Oct. 7 interview on The Block’s The Starting Block. His pitch was simple: this was meant to show support for the crypto industry.
Kerbrat says the purchase does not change Robinhood’s direction
In the interview, Kerbrat said, “We care deeply about Bitcoin and the broader world around it. For us, this is more about having the company and our vision stand with the crypto community.” He said the purchase was really about lining up the company and its vision with the crypto community.
He also said the amount is not material for Robinhood. “Robinhood is now a huge company with a market value in the hundreds of billions of dollars, so $25 million in Bitcoin will not change the company’s current direction.”
Robinhood shares closed at $112 on Oct. 6, down 1.85%, giving the company a market capitalization of about $100 billion.
The interview did not say when Robinhood made the Bitcoin purchase or what average price it paid. And as of publication, there was still no related announcement on Robinhood’s official newsroom or CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account.
Crypto expansion continues
The disclosure landed as Robinhood keeps pushing deeper into crypto. Last week, the company said it plans to roll out crypto perpetual futures for eligible U.S. users in the coming months, letting them take long and short positions in Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, ADA, LINK and HYPE.
Tenev said on X at the time: “Robinhood is bringing the first true perpetual futures product to the United States, with no expiration date and profit and loss settled every 15 minutes.”
Robinhood Chain reaches $1.05 billion in TVL
Robinhood Chain, the company’s layer-2 network built with Arbitrum technology, went live on mainnet in July. Data cited from The Block shows total value locked had reached $1.05 billion as of Oct. 6.
Kerbrat also said Robinhood has 28 million funded accounts on its platform, with 27 million of them in the United States. Robinhood Wallet is available in more than 120 countries. And he said this may be the first time an L2 has been tied to a user base of this size.