As the US corporate earnings season for the first quarter of 2022 draws nearer, investors at retail trading brokerage Robinhood are optimistic about positive news after months of fall in stock price. This is even more necessary after HOOD closed at $11.22 per share last Friday, losing another 35% since the start of 2022. Since its post-IPO peak of $85 last August, the stock has been on a decline, losing more than 85%.
According to 2021 Q4 earnings at the end of January, crypto-related revenue dropped to as low as $51M from a Q2 high of $223M. And with the market trend ever since, analysts have had little optimism that Q1 2022 will show a considerable recovery.
Poor Earnings Supports SHIB Listing
The current decline in the crypto-related revenue has made it more reasonable to list the popular memecoin, Shiba Inu (SHIB). The Robinhood platform currently supports only seven cryptocurrencies for trading, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and Litecoin.
In Q4 2021, the dog-themed popular memecoin, often affiliated with Elon Musk, accounted for 40% of Robinhood’s crypto revenue even though its market capitalisation is only about $19B compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum, with a market capitalisation of $800B and $400B respectively.
It’s no secret that trading in memecoins is a lucrative business.
Considering that Shiba Inu is the second memecoin by market cap (at just over $13B), listing SHIB would seem an easy way for Robinhood to boost its revenues.
Robinhood can be confident that there is a massive demand for this listing – as a petition on change.org for Robinhood to list SHIB has now grown to nearly 560,000 signatures.
A lot of similar cryptocurrency stock exchanges have listed Shiba Inu. Still, Robinhood stated that it was concerned about regulations, so it hasn’t expanded to some other cryptocurrencies.
But with the current decline in crypto-related assets, there will be a lot of pressure on Robinhood to heed the community’s call.
What This Listing Could Mean For SHIB
The listing of Shiba Inu will help the Robinhood platform recover, but it will also boost SHIB in many ways.
The creator of the change.org petition to get SHIB listed on Robinhood noted that “a Robinhood listing would open trading to its 17 million traders”. “It would open up the token to easy trades for many people who may not have or may not be comfortable yet with a crypto exchange,” they continued.
SHIB against the US dollar has traded mostly within 0.000020 to 0.000035 in 2022.
Recent announcements and listings have also played a significant role in helping the meme coin rally in the market. For instance, the Coinbase foray announcement caused SHIB to leap at least 25%.
The Robinhood listing will definitely cause SHIB to lurch even higher. And analysts are predicting resistance at 0.000030, 0.000035 and 0.000040 levels.
But a return to the euphoria experienced in the fourth quarter of 2021, where Shiba Inu’s price reached nearly as high as 0.000090, remains a distant prospect.
