Dive Brief:

• Robinhood CFO Shiv Verma received a promotion grant of restricted stock units with a target grant value of $18 million as part of changes to his compensation, the investing and trading platform said in a Tuesday securities filing. The grant will vest over a four-year period.
• Robinhood’s compensation committee also granted Verma an annual base salary of $600,000, an increase from the $500,000 figure reported last month, when he first took the finance chief role. His target annual bonus opportunity was also increased from 60% to 75% of his base salary, according to the filing. Verma, a Robinhood veteran, took the seat Feb. 6, succeeding Jason Warnick, who is set to remain as an adviser until Sept. 1.
• News of the updated compensation arrangements for its CFO came as Robinhood announced, also Tuesday, that its board of directors approved a $1.5 billion share buyback program. 

Dive Insight:

The share buyback program adds more than $1.1 billion in incremental capacity to Robinhood’s remaining previous authorization, according to Tuesday’s press release. The company announced a $1 billion share repurchase program in May 2024, with Robinhood authorizing another $500 million in April 2025. Robinhood has repurchased 25 million shares as of March 20, 2025, as part of its previous program for a total of over $1.1 billion, with an average share price of $45, according to the release.

“Robinhood is a generational company with a massive long-term opportunity,” Verma said in a statement. “This authorization reflects the confidence of our management team and board in our ability to continue delivering innovative products for customers and creating value for shareholders while returning capital over time.” 

Robinhood’s stock has slumped by roughly 36% year-to-date, according to data from Nasdaq, as the trading platform looks to shake off the impact of a “crypto winter” at the start of the year, which saw the overall market value of cryptocurrencies drop by a collective $2 trillion, the Economist reported in February.

Robinhood saw its crypto revenues decline 38%, to $221 million, in the fourth quarter, according to its Feb. 10 earnings report.

During its earnings call last month, Verma’s first as CFO, the finance chief noted Robinhood remained “long-term bullish” on crypto but cautioned that the asset class represented only about 18% of the business’ overall revenue figures last year.

Although the platform reported an upswing in crypto notional trades for February, daily average revenue trades for its crypto segment stayed flat month-to-month at $500,000, Robinhood said in a March 10 release of select monthly metrics. Notional crypto trading volume reached $25 billion last month, a 9% increase from January and a 74% jump year over year, according to the update.

The cryptocurrency market has continued to face upheaval as the industry navigates both economic and regulatory shifts, particularly concerning stablecoins — digital assets which have their value tied to a fiat asset, such as the U.S. dollar, and which has been a topic of ongoing debate among U.S. lawmakers in recent years.

Shares of stablecoin issuers including Circle and Coinbase fell Tuesday over concerns regarding the most recent draft of the Clarity Act, CNBC reported. The newest draft of the act included language on stablecoin yields that remained unclear and potentially too narrow, CoinDesk reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Clarity Act, touted as a game-changing regulation in the stablecoin space, has been stuck in the Senate Banking Committee since passing the House in January, as Democratic and Republican leaders clashed over language regarding whether crypto exchanges should be allowed to pay yields to stablecoin holders via reward programs — with senators reportedly reaching a compromise last week, according to Politico.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev wrote Friday in support of the Clarity Act in a post thread on X, noting that doing so would allow the crypto space to “finally get the regulatory certainty we've been advocating for” and critiquing the “bank-led anti yield position” as “counter-productive.”

“The pushback from legacy institutions has been predictable,” Tenev wrote. “They lobbied to treat stablecoins strictly as ‘payment rails’ rather than ‘value-holding assets.’ By stripping yield, they aimed to make stablecoins less attractive than traditional bank deposits.”