Public Keys: Strategy Doubles Down on Bitcoin Plans, Robinhood Glitters With Gold

Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.

This week: Strategy goes full laser-eyes on its Bitcoin play, even as it posts a fifth straight quarterly loss; Cboe pats itself on the back for its “really nice” crypto ecosystem; and Robinhood sees crypto transactions take a dip while its premium Gold service continues gaining steam.

Bully for Strategy

Bitcoin treasury and software company Strategy, which trades on the Nasdaq under the MSTR ticker, unveiled its 42-42 Capital Plan during its Thursday earnings call.

The company famously pledged to raise $21 billion to acquire more Bitcoin. Now it wants to amass $42 billion in equity and fixed income by the end of 2027, according to CEO Phong Le.

But even while the company literally doubled down on its bullish Bitcoin stance—and raised its 2025 Bitcoin yield projection from 15% to 25%—it posted a decline of $16.49 per common share.

That’s in part due to the company pivoting from an on-premises to subscription model with its software customers. Yeah, remember those? Strategy has customers who pay for its data analytics software, even though it’s got nothing to do with Bitcoin.

“In Q1, total software revenues were approximately $111 million, down 3.6% year-over-year,” Andrew Kang, chief financial offer, said during the call. “The lower product license revenues, along with support revenues in Q1, continues to be as expected, and our overall revenue trend continues to reflect the ongoing transition of our software business from on-prem to the cloud.”

The company has now reported five straight quarters of losses after having last seen a quarterly gain of $89.1 million in Q4 of 2023.

But analysts don’t care. The stock had climbed 3.35% to $394 as of close Friday, after getting a boost from the likes of independent veteran analyst Fred Krueger.

“Strategy will have a stronger balance sheet than Apple within 18 months,” he wrote on X earlier today.

Cboe’s “really nice ecosystem”

As Cboe, one of the largest global exchange operators, notes record-high earnings per share and revenue on Friday, it also noted that it’s built a “really nice ecosystem around crypto there for customers to engage in.”

First, the metrics. Tariffs have been hell for global markets, but they helped increase EPS by 21% to $2.37 and revenue by 16% to $565.2 million, the company said Friday in its pre-market earnings report.

The catalyst was fear and uncertainty around the impact trade wars could have on markets, according to David Howsen, Cboe’s global president. He said index option volume set a record in Q4 2024, around the time of the November U.S. election.

“That record has since been broken multiple times in April as trade tensions escalated,” he said during the earning call.

In his next breath, Howsen noted “encouraging growth” in the company’s new Bitcoin products: “Most notably, our new Bitcoin index options, tickers CBTX and MBTX.” Those launched in December. And just last week, Cboe launched CBO FTSE Bitcoin Index Futures (yes, it’s a mouthful), which trades under the XBTF ticker.

It’s a Bitcoin futures contract based on the price of BTC, and meant to allow investors another way to hedge existing Bitcoin exposures—including holdings in spot Bitcoin, Bitcoin ETFs, or other derivatives.

Robinhood ebbs and flows

Trading platform Robinhood, which trades on Nasdaq under the HOOD ticker, also reported Q1 earnings this week.

Like Cboe, HOOD put big numbers on the board. The company saw a 50% year-over-year increase in revenue. And crypto transaction revenue climbed 100%, to $252 million, when compared to the same period last year.

But here’s the catch: That crypto transaction revenue has fallen compared to last quarter, when it was $358 million.

CEO Vlad Tenev said during the call that that’s to be expected, and that the company is working to diversify its business so it can absorb the ebb and flow of crypto trading volume without much impact to its bottom line.

“We’re diversifying the business outside of the crypto business, which will make us less reliant on crypto transaction volumes,” he said on an earnings call Thursday. “But also within crypto, there’s going to be diversification over time. So crypto itself will diversify and be less reliant on transaction volumes in the future.”

He didn’t say how, exactly, crypto offerings would change though.

Instead, all that glittered for Robinhood in Q1 was Gold.

“When you look at the Gold credit card, we doubled the Gold cardholders to 200,000 just in the past few weeks and we love what we’re seeing,” Tenev said during yesterday’s earnings call. And in the past year, Robinhood has nearly doubled Gold subscribers to 3.2 million, he added.

Robinhood Gold—no, not that kind—helped the company rake in $18 billion worth of net deposits in Q1. The Silicon Valley-based trading platform gilded the offering for its premium subscribers during a presentation on March 27.

The new perks include “tailor, expert-managed portfolios” managed by former Wall Street traders who used to serve institutional and high-net-worth investors, private jet travel, and same-day delivery of cash direct to a customer’s doorstep.

Other Keys

• High stakes: Crypto companies are really pushing for the SEC to clarify that “crypto staking and associated services” do not fall under the shadow of its regulations. If there were clarity, then U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs would get a boost and at least be able to pull level with their counterparts in other parts of the world.
• Welcome to Florida, Metaplanet: The Japanese Bitcoin treasury company is on its way to the states. The company will operate its new entity, Metaplanet Treasury Corp., with a goal to raise $250 million to further fuel its Bitcoin treasury strategy.
• Riot’s mixed results: Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms shared Q1 earnings on Thursday, disclosing mixed results. The firm’s revenue beat expectations and was up 13% from the previous quarter, yet Riot swung to a $296.4 million loss, or $0.90 per share.

Edited by Andrew Hayward