Robinhood spent $200 million to acquire Bitstamp and expand its crypto operations to the EU. But it won’t stop there.
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Robinhood has been in the spotlight for its $200 million acquisition of European crypto exchange Bitstamp. The TradFi app’s venture into crypto is paying off: its recent earnings showed that revenue is growing substantially, and the Bitstamp acquisition is just one way the company will grow the pie.
Johann Kerbrat, general manager of Robinhood Crypto, came on the show to discuss the acquisition, Robinhood's plans for expanding its crypto business internationally and into the institutional market, the company's approach to listing crypto assets, how regulation has affected its business decisions, and its efforts to bridge traditional finance and decentralized finance.
Show highlights:
- How the acquisition of Bitstamp will reshape Robinhood
- Whether Robinhood could list more coins and whether it’s considering more acquisitions
- Whether the U.S.’s unclear crypto regulation influenced the decision to acquire Bitstamp and which other jurisdictions, besides the EU, Robinhood Crypto is eyeing
- Why Johann was disappointed by the Wells notice Robinhood received from the SEC
- Johann’s U.S. crypto regulation wish list and why Robinhood supports the FIT21 bill
- Why Robinhood delisted ADA, MATIC, and SOL, and the process for listing or delisting a coin on the platform
- Johann’s background in crypto and trajectory at Robinhood Crypto
- How Robinhood is uniquely poised to help bring real-world assets and securities onchain, and how it will handle offerings for institutional investors
- The impact and importance of the introduction of spot bitcoin ETFs
- Why Robinhood decided to offer staking, but only for Solana, not Ethereum
- Whether there’s demand for crypto-native features in the Robinhood platform
- Robinhood’s collaboration with Arbitrum and whether the company might build their own Layer 2
- Johann’s take on the memecoin mania and whether Robinhood could list them
- What Johann thinks about the political fight around crypto in the U.S.
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Guest:
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Acquisition of Bitstamp:
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Memecoin mania
Ether ETFs:
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Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.
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