Robinhood posts strong numbers amid growth in funded accounts
Robinhood, one of the largest trading platforms in the US, has announced the results of the third quarter which shows some robust growth even though the company did not push ahead with any major plans related to crypto.
The company seems to be holding back its push in the crypto field as it does not want to get into too much trouble with the regulators like the SEC who are looking to clip its wings by targeting some of its revenue-generating practices like payments for order flow. Such issues are likely to slow down the adoption of crypto by the platform though it seems to be going ahead with the creation of a crypto wallet amidst some strong user growth numbers. In Q3, the company has reportedly added 660,000 new accounts which brings the total number of funded accounts to 22.4 million which represents a 97% increase when compared to the previous year. Though the customer base nearly doubled over the last 12 months, the monthly active users were down to 18.9 million which is less than 21.3 million active users during the second quarter of this year.
The company CEO Vlad Tenev said that the growth usually comes to the company in the form of waves with certain quarters being low and slow while the following quarters throwing up some very strong numbers which generally follows the market volatility. This part seems logical as when the market is volatile, a lot more traders, new and old, seem to jump into the market to make use of the volatility and try and make as many returns as possible while on the other hand when the market is slow, the retail traders generally find it difficult to make money and hence the numbers returned by the platform during that quarter is comparatively less.
The platform also had its first partnership in social media by partnering with Snapchat to ensure that its financial newsletter Robinhood Snacks is made available to millions of users around the US potentially reaching out to several million users. The company also said that over 1 million users are in the wait list for crypto wallets and the company expects to roll it out to the first set of users within the next few weeks which is likely to be a major shot in the arm not only for the platform but for the crypto industry as a whole.
