Robinhood (HOOD) is increasing its focus on advanced crypto traders, a pivot that reflects evolving customer behavior in a volatile year for digital assets.
“What we've seen so far really depends on the customer segment,” Johan Kerblatt, head of crypto at Robinhood, said in an interview.
“We have a lot of customers who are a little bit younger. For them, they are looking at this as a 'buy on the buy' opportunity because they have a long-term view, so they don't really care about the short-term impact,” he said.
However, Kerblatt, who will speak at Consensus Hong Kong in February 2026, said the company is also seeing an increase in a more sophisticated user base that trades more frequently, such as day trading and managing cost-based strategies.
“We are seeing more activity in our senior trader division,” he said. “This is a combination of more sophisticated traders and more tools available to them.”
To support this shift, Robinhood has introduced features such as tax lot selection and custom cost basis options for crypto transfers to help users manage their tax burden more efficiently.
Cryptocurrency trading will now be able to go through seven liquidity venues, and trading fees will drop to 3 basis points depending on user volume.
For many years, this trading platform has been viewed as a beginner-friendly platform, a place for users to get started with cryptocurrencies before moving on to more advanced tools elsewhere. Robinhood is now trying to change that narrative.
“I think for a long time people thought of Robinhood as a single product,” he says. “People were saying, 'Oh, you can start on Robinhood, but then you're going to go to another platform.'” Now more sophisticated traders are coming to Robinhood from other platforms. Because they're excited about what we're building. ”
This evolution comes as Robinhood plans to expand its cryptocurrency 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 raw trading volume, which can fluctuate depending on market conditions, and more focused on gaining market share.
“If the volume is low, you can't really do anything about it,” Kerblat said. “But if someone wants to use Kraken or Coinbase over Robinhood, that means my product isn't good enough. So I'm going to focus on improving it.”
What will happen in 2026?
“I think accessibility will be a theme next year,” Kerblatt said. “For too long, cryptocurrencies have been built by engineers, for engineers, and we want to extend that to everything we build on-chain.”
