Benzinga - by Michael Cohen, Benzinga Editor.
Robinhood Markets Inc (NASDAQ:HOOD) is making headlines as CEO Vlad Tenev addresses the company’s preparedness for the recent surge in GameStop Corp (NYSE:GME) shares and its strategic acquisition of Bitstamp.
This follows Keith Gill, known as Roaring Kitty, announcing a livestream, causing GameStop shares to soar by 47%.
In an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, Tenev assured that Robinhood is ready for increased trading volume.
“We are prepared. We’ve been working on improving the infrastructure tremendously,” he said.
Tenev highlighted the company’s 24-hour market trading, which allows customers to trade stocks 24 hours a day, five days a week. “So much of this activity starts on the weekends or late at night, Sunday evening in this case,” he said.
Tenev was asked what he was doing Sunday night when Gill posted his $115 million GameStop holdings (which he updated to $586.459 million on Thursday), igniting trading activity.
“I think I was at home, just usually working on Sundays. I was preparing for the week and fortunately, back in COVID days, I would be watching all of our metrics like a hawk, talking to the engineers, but knock on wood, things have been running fairly smoothly.”
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The interview also covered Robinhood’s acquisition of Bitstamp for $200 million. Tenev outlined three primary benefits: accelerated international expansion, the creation of a new exchange and entry into the institutional business.
“It accelerates our international expansion. Bitstamp is a global company with operations in many of the major markets,” he told Fox Business.
“We’ve been thinking for a long time that there is a need for a new exchange in the marketplace, and this paves the way for a new player.”
Tenev also mentioned the move into the institutional business. “Many of our market makers say that a new exchange is needed, one that’s trusted, takes regulatory compliance seriously, and has an advantage in technology,” he said. Robinhood aims to provide the lowest cost trading and superior user experience, recently reducing margin rates to the industry’s lowest.
Looking ahead, Tenev sees the convergence of traditional assets and crypto technology. “We think that in the future, crypto technology and the traditional financial system, including stocks, could converge,” he said. This vision aligns with Robinhood’s strategy to lead in both the crypto and traditional financial markets.
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This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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