Cathie Wood’s investment firm ARK Invest was quick off the mark to purchase 1,297,615 shares of Robinhood as the company went public on Thursday.
With Robinhood's stock closing its inaugural trading session on the Nasdaq at $34.82, this makes the purchase worth more than $45.1 million.
According to data disclosed by ARK Invest, this was also the company’s largest purchase of the day across all six actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with the shares going to the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK).
What is Robinhood?
Robinhood is a popular trading app which allows retail investors to trade commission-free stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin SV (BSV), and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
Robinhood vs Coinbase: The Coming Clash
When Robinhood filed its papers to go public this week, it revealed a lot about its crypto operations. The popular quick-swipe trading app reported over $11 billion in Bitcoin and other digital holdings for its customers, and revealed that 6% of its Q1 revenue came from Dogecoin alone. And this is just the beginning: In the coming year, Robinhood plans to let customers move crypto off and on its platform—just like the pure-play crypto companies allow. This is all good news for crypto fans, in p...
Seen as a potential competitor to Coinbase, which went public in April this year, Robinhood also played a pivotal role in Dogecoin’s meteoric rise earlier this year, as the meme coin was responsible for 6% of the company’s revenue in Q1.
In the same period, as much as 17% of Robinhood’s revenue came from crypto, earning the attention of the company’s C-suite.
In May this year, Robinhood Crypto's COO, Christine Brown, told Decrypt that the company is working on enabling crypto transfers to external wallets—the feature currently not available to the app’s users. The company is also exploring ways in which users can stake and lend their cryptocurrencies.
Robinhood Going Public With Big Crypto Plans: 5 Things to Know
The popular stock and crypto buying app Robinhood will offer shares of a new company on Thursday—its own. The company is conducting an initial public offering (IPO), meaning anyone can invest in its stock. The move is significant not only because Robinhood has become an iconic financial brand, especially among millennials, but because it has also become a major player in the crypto world. Owning shares of Robinhood represents a new way to get exposure to crypto through the stock market—in the sa...
The Robinhood purchase is only the latest in Cathie Wood’s focus on crypto and crypto-adjacent companies.
In the past months, ARK Invest has been regularly purchasing Coinbase stock, Grayscale’s Bitcoin product (GBTC), as well as shares in Jack Dorsey’s Twitter and Square.
