Investing
Robinhood Reports $3.7B January Crypto Volume, Up 95%
February 16, 2023 10:32 pm
On Wednesday, February 15th, Robinhood published its operating data for January. While many of the provided numbers showed a notable increase from the last month of 2022, the broker’s cryptocurrency trading volume was perhaps the biggest standout being up a staggering 95%.
This Wednesday, the online broker Robinhood revealed its operating data for January 2023. The information showed increased numbers in most categories with, for example, Assets Under Custody rising 20% to $74.7 billion. Notional Trading Volumes also saw an increase across the board.
Equity volumes amounted to $46 billion, a 19% increase, and options contracts were also up by 10%. Still, perhaps the most impressive figure of the report came from cryptocurrency trading volumes. After suffering a sharp decline in the wake of the FTX bankruptcy in November 2022, they were up 95% in January 2023 and stood at $3.7 billion. The broker has been offering cryptocurrency trading since 2018.
While significantly below its all-time highs, Robinhood shares have been doing fairly well since the start of the year. Year-to-date, HOOD is up nearly 32%. However, the company’s shares also went through a decline after the Q4 results were published, despite an initial slight upturn, as it had missed most of the estimates.
Robinhood also already found itself a target of an embarrassing if short hack. In late January, the broker’s Twitter account was compromised and used to promote a fraudulent token offering for just under an hour.
While multiple firms with major connections to digital assets delivered disappointing results for the final quarter of 2022, their upcoming reports might just tell a different story. Robinhood’s cryptocurrency trading volume increase is very much in line with a market rally, and renewed interest that the markets saw in January.
Furthermore, while a set of aggressive actions undertaken by US regulators in early February created a fear-and-doubt-filled atmosphere for several days, the sentiment has by this Wednesday once again turned bullish—at least for the time being—as Bitcoin reached a six-month high and rose above $24,000.
Still, the ongoing disruption caused by the collapse of FTX—most recently felt in the form of Genesis’ bankruptcy—and the heightened regulatory scrutiny still pose a threat to a possible longer-running 2023 rally. Just in the last seven days, the SEC managed to cast doubt on the future of crypto staking when it announced an enforcement action against and a settlement with Kraken, and disrupt the stablecoin market with a Wells notice sent to BUSD-issuer Paxos.
This article originally appeared on The Tokenist
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