On April 28, discount brokerage platform Robinhood released its financial results for the first quarter of 2022. On a year-over-year basis, the company’s net income decreased 43% to $299 million. Specifically, revenue from cryptocurrency trading fell 39% to $54 million over the same period. This was due in part to a decline in interest in meme stocks, as well as a bearish crypto market that dominated much of the first three months of the year.
However, despite the decline in sales, the company’s net cumulative accounts increased 27% from 2021, to 22.8 million. At the same time, total assets under custody increased 15% to $93.1 billion. Robinhood took several important steps to improve its cryptocurrency business. The company first made cryptocurrency wallets available to the approximately two million customers on the waiting list in early April, and this week all platform users have access to a wallet address.
Additionally, in response to customer requests, Robinhood included four new coins: Compound (COMP), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL), and Shiba Inu (SHIB). Lastly, Robinhood plans to integrate Bitcoin’s (BTC) layer 2 payment protocol, the Lightning Network, for faster and cheaper transactions. As Robinhood has said:
“Once fully integrated, we expect the service will help accelerate Robinhood’s ability to offer Bitcoin remittances on a global scale – at virtually no cost – and will be important for international expansion.”
This month, Robinhood signed a deal to acquire Ziglu, a UK-based cryptocurrency company and e-money institution, as part of its roadmap. Robinhood plans to leverage Ziglu’s team of financial services and crypto asset experts to help the company expand across the UK and Europe.
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