Robinhood Cuts 10% of Staff After Crypto Revenue Drops
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- Robinhood is cutting 10% of its headcount, CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev told employees Tuesday in an internal message shared on X before the opening bell, citing the need to flatten its organizational structure and build "a lean, hyper-focused team"
- Crypto transaction revenue fell 34% sequentially to $134 million from $221 million in Q1, per April earnings — Robinhood's smallest quarterly profit in a year and a signal of reduced engagement from crypto traders
- Robinhood had approximately 2,900 full-time employees at the end of last year according to an SEC filing accompanying its 2025 annual report, which also highlighted its "lean organizational structure"
- Restructuring costs are expected to total $28 million, covering employee severances, benefits, and share-based compensation, per a separate Tuesday filing
- Robinhood stock dropped 1% to $97 on Tuesday and is down roughly 12% year-to-date, a slide from its all-time high of $153 last year — which the article notes coincided with Bitcoin's October peak above $126,000
- June trading volumes hit record month-to-date levels across equities, options, and prediction markets, the company said, even as it announced the cuts — and Tenev described the move as proactive, stating "Robinhood's business has never been stronger"
- The impact on crypto-facing products — including stock tokens offered to customers in Europe and Robinhood Chain, the firm's Arbitrum-based Ethereum layer-2 network — is not yet clear, and a Robinhood spokesperson pointed Decrypt only to Tenev's statement
Why it matters: Roughly 290 Robinhood employees are losing their jobs at a firm whose CEO insists is performing at peak strength — a framing at odds with the 34% sequential collapse in crypto revenue. The cuts land while Robinhood is mid-expansion into European tokenized stocks and a self-built Ethereum L2, meaning a smaller team now has to ship the products meant to reduce the very crypto dependency that triggered the layoffs.
