Robinhood launched a slew of new services for Gold members, which could further blur the lines between fiat and crypto.
Gold, the trading app’s premium subscription, costs $5 a month or $50 a year, with 4% interest on uninvested cash and higher thresholds for instant deposits.
At a presentation in San Francisco on Wednesday, the company unveiled Robinhood Strategies, which aims to deliver “tailor, expert-managed portfolios” driven by a team that collectively have over 50 years of Wall Street experience serving institutional and high-net-worth investors.
Meanwhile, Robinhood Banking will deliver access to traditional checking and savings accounts, tickets to exclusive events such as the Oscars, private jet travel, and same-day delivery of cash direct to a customer’s doorstep.
An AI-powered investment tool called Robinhood Cortex is also set to deliver “real-time analysis and insights” to uncover market opportunities.
The theme across all three brands is to offer perks once reserved for the “ultra-wealthy” to the public at large.”
Analysts at research firm Bernstein said they think investors “under-appreciate” the value of Robinhood’s full platform, particularly because non-trading activity accounted for 47% of the company’s revenue in 2024.
“HOOD is also leaning into disruptive technologies to bring down the cost of financial access, which has historically been available to only the elite (high net-worth thresholds) within banking,” Bernstein wrote in a report shared with Decrypt. “Crypto tokenisation brings down the cost of offering trading-access, leveraging the blockchain.”
The analysts said they expect Robinhood shares, which trade on the Nasdaq under the HOOD ticker, to outperform and set a price target of $105.
It’s a very bullish forecast. At the time of writing, HOOD is trading for $45.23, having gained 1.14% on the day.
Yesterday, Robinhood also confirmed the waitlist for its Gold Card is now approaching three million—and this week, another 100,000 customers will start to receive theirs. This product has no annual fee or forex commission, and offers up to 5% cashback on purchases.
The enhanced Gold program comes as Robinhood looks to expand its crypto offering—emboldened by the SEC ending its investigation into the company.
A 700% surge in revenues from crypto trades helped Robinhood achieve record net income of $916 million in the fourth quarter—ten times higher than the same period in 2023.
At the time, CEO Vlad Tenev said he believes Robinhood is “uniquely positioned at the intersection of traditional finance and DeFi.”
Bernstein agree, predicting that the company is positioning itself to “capitalize on the impending $114 trillion great wealth transfer, set to occur over the next few decades as wealth passes to younger generations.”
Blending banking services with crypto trading could broaden access to digital assets—and encourage adoption among investors yet to dabble in Bitcoin.
It could also give Robinhood the upper hand against banks that are yet to start offering crypto products to their clients, despite regulatory clarity slowly beginning to emerge in the U.S.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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