Robinhood Billion-Dollar Reversal: $600 Million Deal Sees Bankman-Fried Stake Return Home
Robinhood, the popular online brokerage platform, has successfully executed a significant share repurchase agreement, acquiring $605 million worth of shares from Emergent Fidelity Technologies, owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.
The company filed an 8-K form with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to officially announce the agreement, which had been previously disclosed earlier this year.
Robinhood CFO Anticipates Dynamic Growth Ahead
Robinhood’s Board of Directors authorized the pursuit of repurchasing the remaining 55 million shares that Emergent Fidelity Technologies had acquired in May 2022.
This share repurchase initiative underscored the board’s belief in the company’s future success and the value it could deliver to its shareholders. Per the announcement, the completion of this transaction represents a significant milestone in solidifying Robinhood’s position in the market.
On August 31, 2023, Robinhood finalized the purchase of all 55,273,469 shares from Emergent Fidelity Technologies at a total cost of $605,694,411.59. This equates to an average price of approximately $10.96 per share.
On this matter, Jason Warnick, Chief Financial Officer of Robinhood, expressed his satisfaction with the completion of the share purchase, stating:
We are happy to have completed the purchase of these shares and look forward to executing on our growth plans on behalf of our customers and shareholders.
Robinhood’s Ethereum Holdings Soar
On a significant note, revealing data from on-chain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence indicates that Robinhood controls a staggering 1.72 million Ethereum (ETH), making it the fifth-largest holder of the digital asset. As of August 30, this Ethereum stash alone is valued at approximately $2.93 billion.
The extent of Robinhood’s crypto holdings is even more impressive when considering the platform’s overall cryptocurrency portfolio, which exceeds $6.6 billion in value.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum comprise over half of this substantial asset pool. Robinhood controls approximately $3.3 billion of BTC, underscoring its significant influence in the Bitcoin market.
Alongside Bitcoin, the platform’s Ethereum holdings demonstrate its position as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
In addition to Bitcoin and Ethereum, Robinhood’s digital wallet encompasses other prominent cryptocurrencies.
Among these is SHIB, valued at an impressive $227 million. The platform also holds considerable amounts of Chainlink (LINK), estimated at $30 million, and Avalanche (AVAX), valued at around $29 million.
According to CoinGecko data, the current global cryptocurrency market capitalization is $1.08 trillion, reflecting a decrease of -3.56% over the past 24 hours.
Presently, BTC holds a market cap of $504 billion, signifying a Bitcoin dominance of 46.46%. In contrast, Stablecoins account for a market cap of $125 billion, representing an 11.53% share of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization.
Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView.com
