Tag Archives: Robinhood

Robinhood pays $605 million for 55 million shares once owned by Sam Bankman-Fried following a 4-way tussle – Yahoo Finance

  1. Robinhood pays $605 million for 55 million shares once owned by Sam Bankman-Fried following a 4-way tussle Yahoo Finance
  2. Retail Trading Giant Robinhood Repurchases $605,000,000 Worth of Shares the Feds Seized From Sam Bankman-Fried The Daily Hodl
  3. Robinhood Agrees $600 Million Buyback of Seized Sam Bankman-Fried HOOD Stake From US Marshal Service Cryptonews
  4. Robinhood buys back $605 million stake once owned by Sam Bankman-Fried CNN
  5. Robinhood Buys Back Sam Bankman-Fried’s Seized Shares Worth $600 Million Decrypt
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Massachusetts Supreme Court Upholding State’s Fiduciary Duty Rule and Holding Robinhood Accountable is a Huge Victory for Main Street Investors – Better Markets

  1. Massachusetts Supreme Court Upholding State’s Fiduciary Duty Rule and Holding Robinhood Accountable is a Huge Victory for Main Street Investors Better Markets
  2. Massachusetts court rejects Robinhood’s challenge to state investment advice rule Reuters
  3. Live news: Massachusetts wins case against Robinhood as regulators try to ban broker Financial Times
  4. Massachusetts Court Overturns Robinhood Win Wealth Management
  5. Massachusetts’ highest court hands a win to state-level securities regulation in Robinhood case Boston Herald
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Coinbase, Robinhood, Bitcoin miners surge as Ripple ruling bodes well for crypto plays: ‘This is a positive read-through’ – Fortune

  1. Coinbase, Robinhood, Bitcoin miners surge as Ripple ruling bodes well for crypto plays: ‘This is a positive read-through’ Fortune
  2. Should You Buy Ripple (XRP) While It’s Still Below $1? The Motley Fool
  3. What Are the Odds XRP Price Hits New All-Time Highs After Ripple Win Against SEC? BeInCrypto
  4. Legal Expert Warns Victory May Be Short-Lived for Ripple and XRP — Says Judge ‘Got the Law Wrong’ – Featured Bitcoin News Bitcoin News
  5. Why Ripple’s Victory Against The SEC May Be Short-Lived: Legal Expert NewsBTC
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Billions of USD in DOGE Held by Robinhood, Quarter of Circulating Supply – U.Today

  1. Billions of USD in DOGE Held by Robinhood, Quarter of Circulating Supply U.Today
  2. Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE) show no signs of progress, while RenQ Finance (RENQ) sells out stage 3 of its Presale, raising more than $4.3 Million. Analytics Insight
  3. Memecoin Market Watch: Dogecoin Skyrockets 9%, Shiba Inu Up 5% CryptoPotato
  4. Analyst Predicts Burst to the Upside for Dogecoin, Says Top Memecoin Looks Primed To Have Its Moment The Daily Hodl
  5. Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) Are Losing Holders To Collateral Network (COLT) – Here’s Why Analytics Insight
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Sam Bankman-Fried borrowed $546 million from his hedge fund to buy a Robinhood stake


New Yokr
CNN
 — 

When Sam Bankman-Fried bought a nearly 7.6% stake in Robinhood, the popular stock-trading app, earlier this year, he financed the deal with more than half a billion dollars borrowed from his own hedge fund — the entity that prosecutors say was illegally funneling customer funds from its affiliated platform, FTX.

In an affidavit that emerged Tuesday, Bankman-Fried said he and FTX co-founder Gary Wang borrowed more than $546 million from the hedge fund, Alameda Research, which they used to purchase the Robinhood shares via a holding company primarily controlled by Bankman-Fried.

Wang has since pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and conspiracy, in cooperation with US prosecutors investigating FTX’s collapse. Bankman-Fried has been indicted on eight criminal counts.

Since stepping down from FTX, he has repeatedly denied knowingly committing fraud; his arraignment date hasn’t been set. He was arrested earlier this month in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, and extradited to the US last week. He is under house arrest at his parents’ home in California, and scheduled to enter a plea in a federal court in Manhattan on January 3. He could face life in prison if found guilty.

Bankman-Fried’s stake in Robinhood is now at the center of a separate, multinational legal battle over the assets associated with FTX’s bankrupt crypto empire.

Four separate entities have laid claim to the approximately 56 million shares, worth about $450 million. FTX’s new management, which is trying to claw back funds for investors and customers of the bankrupt platform, want to wrest control of the shares from the Antigua-based holding company 90% owned by Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried himself claims ownership of the shares, seeking a source of payment for legal expenses, according to FTX. Also claiming the Robinhood shares are bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi, and an individual FTX creditor.

Because the competing claims, FTX filed a motion earlier this month to the Delaware bankruptcy court to keep the assets frozen until the court “can resolve the issues in a manner that is fair to all creditors of the Debtors.”

It’s not clear from the court filings whether the $546 million used to purchase the stake included funds that prosecutors allege were stolen from customer deposits in FTX.

BlockFi, a prominent crypto lender, halted withdrawals as FTX came unraveled, citing significant exposure to the trading platform. It filed for bankruptcy on November 28, just over two weeks after FTX, Alameda and dozens of affiliates went under.

BlockFi is suing Bankman-Fried for the Robinhood shares, which BlockFi claims it is owed after Alameda defaulted on $680 million in collateralized loan obligations.

Earlier this month, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told CNBC that he’s “not surprised” the stake is one of the more valuable assets on FTX’s books because it is a public company’s stock.

“We don’t have a lot of information that you guys don’t have. We’re just watching this unfold and … it’s going to be locked up in bankruptcy proceedings, most likely for some time.”

Meanwhile, the recent implosion of cryptocurrencies has been disastrous for Robinhood. The company laid off 23% of its staff in August after cutting 9% of its employees in April. The online brokerage’s stock has been in freefall as trading has dried up.

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Robinhood to cut 23% of its workforce, revenue sinks 44%

The latest cuts, which will affect 780 employees, continues a massive freefall for the once high-flying online brokerage. In a separate development Tuesday, the state of New York hit the Menlo Park, California, firm with a $30 million fine.
In a blog post on the company’s website, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said the “deterioration of the macro environment” — notably decades-high inflation coupled with a cryptocurrency crash — has reduced the company’s customer trading activity and assets under custody.
In its second-quarter earnings report, also released Tuesday, the company showed a 44% drop in revenue from a year ago. Robinhood’s monthly active users in June decreased by more than 7 million, or 34%, and that assets under custody have dropped by more than $37 billion, or 37%, from the second quarter of last year.
The company’s staffing and operations approach, he added, was tailored for a continuation of the high-growth crypto boom of the pandemic era.

“Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022,” Tenev wrote in a message to employees. “In this new environment, we are operating with more staffing than appropriate.”

He added: ” As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory — this is on me.”

The layoffs will affect employees across all functions of the company, with operations, marketing and program management positions being the hardest hit, he said. The company planned to notify all employees via email and Slack on Tuesday with their status as well as resources if they were affected.

Separately on Tuesday, the New York State Department of Financial Services fined Robinhood’s cryptocurrency arm $30 million for allegedly violating reporting requirements related to anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations.

“As its business grew, Robinhood Crypto failed to invest the proper resources and attention to develop and maintain a culture of compliance — a failure that resulted in significant violations of the department’s anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations,” Adrienne A. Harris, the department’s superintendent said in a statement.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the percentage decline in Robinhood’s assets under custody. Those fell by 37% in the second quarter.

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Robinhood Lays Off 23% of Staff as Retail Investors Fade from Platform

Robinhood Markets Inc.

HOOD 2.10%

is slashing about 23% of its full-time staff as the flashy online brokerage continues to reel from a sharp slowdown in customer trading activity.

The job cuts mark the second round of layoffs this year at Robinhood, which in April reduced its staff by about 9%. Together, the two rounds have cut more than 1,000 jobs from the company.

The layoffs come alongside a broader company reorganization,

Vlad Tenev,

Robinhood’s chief executive, said in a message posted to the company’s blog. In the statement, Mr. Tenev said the previous round of layoffs in April “did not go far enough” in helping the company cut costs.

“Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the Covid era would persist into 2022,” Mr. Tenev said in the message. “In this new environment, we are operating with more staffing than appropriate. As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory—this is on me.”

Robinhood also moved up the release of its second-quarter results a day earlier than scheduled, reporting its monthly active users tumbled to 14 million, down 34% from a year earlier. Revenue fell 44% to $318 million.

Launched less than a decade ago, Robinhood ushered in a free-stock trading phenomenon during the Covid-19 pandemic, thanks to its easy-to-use, mobile-first online brokerage platform.

By the second quarter of last year—Robinhood’s best, according to public filings—the company boasted more than 21 million active users, who flocked to the app to trade flashy meme stocks, options and cryptocurrencies.

But the pandemic-darling has seen its fortunes unwind this year as markets have tumbled and customers are no longer stuck at home like they were during the Covid-19 pandemic. Revenue tied to customers’ trading activity dropped 55% in the latest quarter to $202 million.

Robinhood’s stock price plunged this year and finished Tuesday at $9.23, down 76% from its initial public offering price last year of $38 a share. Its stock fell 1.6% in recent after-hours trading.

Robinhood scaled up staffing quickly during the Covid-19 pandemic to meet the surge in demand for its services. On the company’s earnings call in April, Mr. Tenev said the company grew its head count to nearly 3,900 in the first quarter of this year from roughly 700 at the end of 2019. Tuesday’s reduction will bring the head count to about 2,600.

In his blog post, Mr. Tenev said all employees would receive an email and a Slack message with their employment status immediately following Tuesday’s companywide meeting where the layoffs were announced. Employees who were laid off will be able to remain employed through October, Mr. Tenev said.

“The reality is that we over-hired, in particular in some of our support functions,” Mr. Tenev said later on the call with reporters. He noted that employees in support, operations, marketing and program management would be most acutely affected.

A number of technology companies have laid off employees in recent months as they grapple with a slowdown in growth and the threat of a looming recession.

Twitter Inc.,

Netflix Inc.

and

Tesla Inc.

are among those that have made staff cuts.

Within the brokerage landscape, Robinhood has found itself more deeply affected by the current market environment. Compared with larger, entrenched players in the industry, Robinhood’s users tend to be younger and have less money in their brokerage accounts. Jason Warnick, Robinhood’s chief financial officer, said Robinhood customers tend to invest in growth stocks and cryptocurrencies. Both categories were hammered by a downturn in markets this year.

In addition to slowing growth, Robinhood has found itself under the watchful eye of regulators. The New York State Department of Financial Services said Tuesday that it imposed a $30 million fine on Robinhood’s cryptocurrency trading unit for alleged violations of anti-money-laundering and cybersecurity regulations.

The company, meanwhile, has encountered questions about the future viability of part of its business model, after Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman

Gary Gensler

earlier this year outlined a revamp of trading rules that could threaten one of the key ways Robinhood makes money.

As its business has struggled this year, Robinhood has increasingly been considered a takeover target by some market watchers, especially in the highly competitive brokerage industry. In May, one of the biggest names in cryptocurrency,

Sam Bankman

-Fried, unveiled a roughly $648 million investment in Robinhood in exchange for 7.6% of the company’s Class A shares.

Any outside investor, including Mr. Bankman-Fried, would face an uphill battle in mounting an aggressive takeover bid for Robinhood, due to a dual-class share structure that gives the majority of voting control to Mr. Tenev and

Baiju Bhatt,

Robinhood’s other co-founder.

Mr. Warnick reiterated on Tuesday’s media call that Robinhood intends to continue as a stand-alone, independent company.

“We’ve got an incredibly strong balance sheet with $6 billion in cash and we’ve got a lot of momentum on the product side,” he said. “To the contrary of being acquired, we actually think that we should be looking more aggressively at opportunities to acquire other companies that would help speed our innovation.”

Mr. Warnick added that Robinhood plans to roll out tax-advantaged retirement accounts later this year, following its earlier launch of other products including a new debit card. Some former employees, customers and analysts, however, have criticized the brokerage for being too slow to unveil new products that could diversify its revenue stream.

Write to Caitlin McCabe at caitlin.mccabe@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Bankman-Fried’s FTX says no talks to acquire Robinhood

The logo of Robinhood Markets, Inc. is seen at a pop-up event on Wall Street after the company’s IPO in New York City, U.S., July 29, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

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June 27 (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange said it is not in talks to acquire Robinhood Markets Inc (HOOD.O), after a report on Monday claimed the exchange was exploring such a deal.

Bloomberg News reported on Monday FTX was discussing internally how to buy the app-based brokerage and that Robinhood had not received a formal takeover approach, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

“There are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood,” Bankman-Fried said in an emailed statement.”We are excited about Robinhood’s business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them.”

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Robinhood declined to comment. The retail-trading platform’s shares were down 5% in extended trading after jumping over 14% on the report.

Last month, the founder and chief executive of FTX revealed a 7.6% stake in Robinhood but said he did not have any intention of taking control of the retail-trading platform.

Robinhood’s dual-class shares give its founders control of 64% of the voting shares outstanding, making it virtually impossible for takeovers without their support. read more

The popular trading platform has come under pressure this year as trading volumes ease from 2021’s frenetic pace – when retail investors used it to pump money into shares of so-called meme stocks such as GameStop (GME.N) and AMC Entertainment (AMC.N).

That slowdown, along with a sell-off in high-growth technology stocks, has driven a near 50% slump in Robinhood shares this year. The company had a market valuation of nearly $7 billion as of Friday’s closing price.

FTX’s U.S. arm announced in May it would launch a stock trading platform by the end of the summer. Last week, it acquired partner Embedded Financial Technologies for an undisclosed amount, which would add custody, execution and clearing services to its equity trading platform.

FTX and its billionaire founder Bankman-Fried have rescued other players during the crypto market’s recent crash. It provided crypto lender BlockFi with a $250 million revolving credit facility to help the firm avoid a liquidity crunch.

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Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru, John McCrank and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Aditya Soni and Richard Chang

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Employees Scrambled to Keep Robinhood Afloat in January 2021 Meme-Stock Frenzy, House Report Finds

Robinhood Markets struggled to handle huge volumes of stock trading and sparred with its principal customer, market maker Citadel Securities, during the week in January 2021 when meme stocks exploded, according to a report from the Democratic staff of the House Financial Services Committee.

The committee held hearings in February 2021, questioning the chief executives of Robinhood and Citadel Securities, as well as meme-stock hero Keith Gill and Gabe Plotkin, the hedge-fund manager who lost billions betting against GameStop and other hot stocks. The staff reviewed tens of thousands of pages of internal documents, including pointed communications inside and between the companies.

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Elon Musk’s ‘best’ Twitter offer looks bogus

The Elon Musk-Twitter drama keeps taking sometimes bizarre, unexpected turns so whatever I write here could be moot not long after the ink dries. 

It’s always been dangerous to talk in absolutes about Musk. He is said to be genius-level smart but he’s done some really dumb things (weird tweets nearly got him jammed up for libel and caused him problems with the Securities and Exchange Commission). His baby, the electric-car giant Tesla, was woefully mismanaged, plagued by production issues, and nearly declared bankruptcy. It miraculously survived and came back stronger, making him the world’s richest man.

More recently, he famously put down a “best and final” offer for financially shaky yet ubiquitous social media company Twitter. The price: $44 billion or $54.20 a share (which included a pot reference; “4:20” is the “time to toke” in weed-smoking culture). It was a hefty premium to its stock price then and even heftier now after the market sell-off.

Twitter’s board ultimately realized that Crazy Elon was offering a once-in-lifetime payday for its beleaguered investors and took the deal.

Musk was on the verge of buying what he called the world’s public square. He would be the king of all media by taking Twitter private and fixing its manifold business flaws (for all its influence, it has no cash flow and no earnings).

Until suddenly he wasn’t.

Somewhere along the line, he got into his head that he was overpaying for a dog with fleas. He put the deal on hold indefinitely. His hardly believable reason for threatening to walk: There are too many fake accounts on Twitter that can’t be monetized by him or anyone else. He also said Twitter was hiding this bot problem, something tantamount to fraud. He wants to take a deeper look at the books.

Elon Musk has said he is worried about the large amounts of fake accounts on Twitter.
JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

If he were really worried about bots, he wouldn’t have waived due diligence before signing the deal paperwork.

What’s next? The business press has always been skeptical about Musk’s intentions because most of Wall Street has been skeptical. That’s why the stock never traded close to his offer price. 

For what it’s worth, here’s the viewpoint of two bankers, one who has worked with his Tesla board, and another at a firm involved in his Twitter financing machinations.

Only on his terms

They say virtually the same thing. Musk is telling people he still wants Twitter. He thinks he can make it work as a private company, clean up the bot problem and sell it at a profit sometime in the next five years.

But Musk wants the company (like everything else) on his terms, which are always in flux. He doesn’t read balance sheets but goes by his gut and has no issue with flouting conventional banker norms (i.e. your word is your bond) to get his prize. His gut told him to waive due diligence. It’s now telling him that even though he signed a deal leaving him on the hook for the $1 billion breakup fee and maybe more in damages, he can get Twitter to the table and agree to his terms, aka a much lower purchase price.

He might be right. Twitter first said it would enforce the initial deal terms, maybe even go to court, but now appears to be playing ball with Musk. It recently said it will turn over more data on its bot issue — a move that means talks are back on. The bankers tell me the Twitter board knows that finding another suitor will be difficult even at around the $40 a share it’s trading at now. The board can’t just accept anything, but also can’t tell Musk to just pound sand.

Elon Musk could lose $1 billion if his Twitter deal falls out.
Patrick Pleul/Pool Photo via AP, File

So the thinking among my two guys is that Twitter agrees to a lower price, possibly significantly lower, and Crazy Elon gets his public square, albeit for much cheaper.

That means the deal is on, right? Seems so. But no one really knows with Crazy Elon.

Gensler goes gaga 

Left-wing SEC chief Gary Gensler finally announced last week his intentions to overhaul the stock market. Forget about the pretty good deal small investors get now: zero-commission trades and mobile apps that make stock trading seamless and inexpensive for newbies.

Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler is chasing after retail “meme” stock investors.
Samuel Corum – CNP / MEGA

Gensler told attendees at an investor conference that bad stuff is happening where no one can see it; too many trades aren’t going to public exchanges. They’re being routed to private trading venues known as dark pools. Investors believe they’re trading for free on Robinhood but could be getting ripped off without knowing it.

Gensler offered no data to show that markets are screwing small investors through its current structure. It’s his hunch.

Upending the markets on a hunch is pretty dangerous stuff. Particularly when you’re simply trying to burnish your class-warfare credentials, as most observers suspect. The good news (and bad news for Gensler): His proposed changes will probably take years to implement as Congress — which will likely be in GOP hands after November — debates their merits.

By that time, it’ll all be over. His current boss, Sleepy Joe Biden, will likely be out of office, replaced by a Republican president or a sober-minded Democrat who will resist “fixing” something that doesn’t need fixing.

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