Robinhood makes significant strides in crypto business in Q1 despite falling revenue

On April 28, discount-brokerage platform Robinhood published its financial results for the first quarter of 2022. Year-over-year, the firm's net revenue declined by 43% to $299 million. Specifically, revenue from cryptocurrency trading fell by 39% to $54 million during the same period. This was partly due to a decrease in the interest in meme stocks as well as an ongoing cryptocurrency bear market that dominated much of the first three months of the year.

However, despite a decrease in sales, the company's net cumulative funded accounts rose by 27% year-over-year to 22.8 million. At the same time, total assets under custody increased 15% to $93.1 billion. Robinhood took several important steps in enhancing its crypto business. First, the firm rolled out crypto wallets to the approximately two million waitlisted customers in early April, with a full roll-out completed this week.

Then, in response to customer requests, Robinhood listed four new coins; Compound (COMP), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL) and Shiba Inu (SHIB). Finally, Robinhood plans to integrate with layer-2 Bitcoin (BTC) payment protocol Lightning Network for faster transactions with lower fees. As told by Robinhood:

"Once fully integrated, we expect the service to help accelerate Robinhood's ability to serve Bitcoin remittances on a global scale — at virtually no cost — and will be important for international expansion."

This month, Robinhood signed an agreement to acquire Ziglu, a U.K.-based electronic money institution and crypto firm, as part of its roadmap. Robinhood plans to leverage Ziglu's team of financial services and crypto experts to help the company expand across the United Kingdom and Europe.