Robinhood’s revenue increased in Q1 despite the overall downturn of 18% last quarter but the crypto business is still headed in another direction so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

Robinhood reported net revenue of $299 million for Q1 2022 including the $54 million for the crypto busienss and the company announced that it will lay off 9% of its employees because of slow growth. Just two days after laying off 9% of its workforce, Robinhood’s revenue increased in the first quarter despite the downfall of 18% from the $363 million reproted in Q4 2021. It is an even more dramatic dip compared to this past time when the stock and crypto trading app notched $522 million in net revenue.

Despite the bigger slip, Robinhood’s crypto division saw an increase from last quarter jumping by 13% from $48 million in Q4 to $54 million in the first quarter of 2022. the year-over-year comparison is even unfavorable for Robinhood after recording $88 million in crypto revenue in the first quarter of 2021 on the back of the DOGE hype. This is a 39% drop from the same time last year. Robinhood reported a net loss of $392 million for the business this quarter got down from $420 million in Q4 2021 and dramatically from a loss of $1.4 billion in the first quarter of last year. Robinhood’s initial report doesn’t go into the most detail about the status of its crypto business but the company will still hold an earnings call this afternoon.

The report mentioned that with the recent addition of Solana, Polygon, SHIB, and Compound but there are other plans to support Bitcoin’s LN for payments. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev announced that the company will lay off between 300 and 350 employees of about 9% of the workforce after the growth slowed down. Robinhood had a few positions listed at the time and said that it planned to launch new products in the year ahead.

Vlad Tenev stated that Robinhood is prioritizing internal opportunities for automation wherever possible and that there are many at the company that has duplicate roles and job functions. From 2020 to mid-2021, Tenev added that Robinhood went through a period of growth due to the COVID pandemic, low-interest rates, and stimulus checks. With so many people bored at home, it was quite easy to spend some money on the Robinhood app.