While the prevalence of BTC on trading and investing platforms has grown exponentially, it’s hard to ignore the curious case of Robinhood (HOOD), now reported to control a single BTC wallet with holdings surpassing a whopping $3 billion. Data from Arkham Intelligence suggests Robinhood’s bitcoin prowess thereby places it third behind two prominent crypto exchanges: “Binance” and “Bitfinex“, who respectively have garnered $6.4 and $4.3 billion worth of the digital token on individual wallets.
The spotlight wasn’t necessarily always shining on Robinhood for its bitcoin treasury. The wallet’s heft, accrued over a few months, conferred it a somewhat infamous reputation among market stalwarts. The mystery surrounding the owner of such colossal bitcoin wealth has produced more questions than answers, stirring a coffee cup of conversations and apprehension within investor circles. Robinhood have yet to officially respond to such speculations.
In a turn of events, the plot thickened as possibilities were ventured about the possible links of these sizable holdings to financial titan “BlackRock“, which earlier vied for a Bitcoin ETF. Others surmised it could trace back to the crypto exchange “Gemini” manoeuvering its users’ holdings into a novel wallet.
Robinhood accrued significantly; some 118,300 BTC were rerouted to this wallet from multiple smaller wallets in a span of three months, confirmed reps from Arkham through a telegram chat with CoinDesk. Championed by crypto trade entity Jump Trading, these coins stand securely within the Bitcoin blockchain. These transactions started to snowball from March 8, gaining ground up until July 14, corroborated by BitInfoCharts data.
What’s intriguing within this saga has been Robinhood’s expansive bitcoin exposure which stands in contrast to its rather paradoxical dip in terms of crypto trading volume. In its second quarter results, Robinhood scrapped out a mere $31 million in profits via crypto trades, marking an 18% slump from the $38 million in Q1. These figures amount to just 16% of the $193 million in total trading revenue, down 7% sequentially, standing in stark contrast to the magnitude of its $3bn BTC holdings.
Thus, while Robinhood’s enormous single wallet BTC holdings paint an impressive portrait, the true questions lie in who ‘owns’ this wallet and how the firm managed to acquire such wealth despite dwindling trading volumes on its platform. Until Robinhood steps forward with some answers, the crypto community is left pondering.
Source: Coindesk
