Robinhood (HOOD) is turning its attention to advanced cryptocurrency traders, a shift that reflects evolving customer behavior during a volatile year for digital assets.
“What we’ve seen really depends on the customer segment,” Johann Kerbrat, head of crypto at Robinhood, said in an interview.
“We have a lot of clients who are a little younger. For them, they see this as an opportunity to ‘buy the dip’ because they have a longer-term horizon, so they care less about the short-term impact,” he said.
But the company is also seeing a growing segment of more sophisticated users trading more frequently, including day trading and managing cost basis strategies, said Kerbrat, who will speak at Consensus Hong Kong in February 2026.
“We’ve seen a lot more activity in our advanced merchant segment,” he said. “It’s a combination of having more advanced operators now and also more tools to use.”
To support that shift, Robinhood has introduced features like tax batch selection and custom cost basis options for crypto transfers, which help users manage their tax exposure more efficiently.
Cryptocurrency trading can now be conducted across seven liquidity venues, with trading fees dropping by up to three basis points, depending on user volume.
For years, the trading platform was seen as a beginner-friendly platform, a place where users got started with cryptocurrencies before moving on to more advanced tools elsewhere. Robinhood is now trying to change that narrative.
“For a long time, I think people looked at Robinhood more as a one-size-fits-all product,” he said. “People said, ‘Oh, you can start on Robinhood, but then you move to a different platform.’ Now, we’re seeing more advanced traders coming from other platforms to Robinhood because they’re excited about what we’re building.”
That evolution comes as Robinhood plans to expand its crypto business through international expansion, partnerships with on-chain protocols, and infrastructure upgrades designed to support more advanced trading features.
Still, the company says it is less focused on gross trading volume (which can fluctuate with market conditions) and more on gaining market share.
“If the volume is low, I can’t really do anything about it,” Kerbrat said. “But if someone prefers to use Kraken or Coinbase instead of Robinhood, that means my product is not good enough, so I will focus on improving it.”
As for what 2026 has in store for us?
“I think next year will be about accessibility,” Kerbrat said. “For too long, cryptocurrencies were built by engineers for engineers. We want to expand that to everything we build on-chain.”
