Robinhood Is Giving Away a $130K+ Gold Bar—Plus 999 Smaller Ones. But Should You Enter?

• Robinhood’s new sweepstakes will award a 1-kilogram gold bar to one lucky winner and 999 smaller bars to qualifying Gold members.

• Net deposits made to a Robinhood brokerage account between Nov. 3 and Nov. 28 count as entries, with each dollar earning one entry.

• Already a Gold member? Entering is simple and free. But if you’re not, the giveaway’s long odds make it hard to justify joining—and paying—just for a chance at gold.

Popular online brokerage Robinhood is giving its premium customers a shot at something rare for a brokerage: physical gold. The brokerage’s new sweepstakes, open to Robinhood Gold members through Black Friday, will award 1,000 prizes of gold bars to selected winners.

One grand-prize winner will receive a 1-kilogram bar of gold—the equivalent of a little more than 32 troy ounces, which is worth about $130,000 based on the price of gold at the time of writing on Friday, Nov. 14. The other 999 winners will each get a 2.5-gram bar of gold, currently valued at roughly $330.

The total value of all prizes will fluctuate with the price of gold, but with the precious metal trading near record highs, these are valuable prizes by any measure.

If you’re already a Robinhood Gold member, entering the giveaway costs little beyond moving money around. But if you’re not—and wouldn’t otherwise be in the market for a Robinhood brokerage account—the sweepstakes alone probably isn’t worth the effort. So don’t get swept up in the hype just because gold prices are near record highs right now.

To qualify for the giveaway, you’ll need to be both a Robinhood Gold member and a Robinhood brokerage account holder. Though brokerage accounts are free, Robinhood Gold, the company’s premium membership, costs $5 per month or $50 per year.

Entries are based on how much you deposit into your brokerage account during the sweepstakes period, which runs from Nov. 3 through Nov. 28 (“Black Friday”). You’ll receive one entry for every dollar deposited—so a $5,000 deposit equals 5,000 entries—and you can make multiple deposits.

There’s a cap of 1,002,000 entries per person, no matter how much you deposit. And to be eligible, your Gold membership must be active as of midnight Eastern Time on Nov. 28.

Withdrawals work in the opposite direction. If you pull money out of your account during the sweepstakes period, those amounts reduce your total entries. So to maximize your chances, you’ll need to keep your deposits in place until at least Nov. 29.

You can also enter the sweepstakes by mailing in a physical entry, which doesn’t require being a Gold member. Each valid mail-in entry counts for 3,000 sweepstakes entries as long as it’s received by the deadline and meets all official requirements. Full instructions are listed in Robinhood’s sweepstakes rules.

If you’re already a Robinhood Gold member, entering the giveaway doesn’t cost anything beyond shifting cash into your brokerage account. The tradeoff is what that cash earns while it’s parked there. For Gold members, Robinhood currently pays 3.50% interest on uninvested brokerage cash, which is competitive but not among the best rates available.

If you’re earning more than 4% in one of the top high-yield savings accounts, moving money to Robinhood for the sweepstakes could mean giving up some interest income for several weeks. On a $15,000 balance, for example, the difference between earning 3.5% and 4.5% amounts to about $12 over a month—not a dealbreaker, but worth noting.

For those who aren’t already Gold members, the calculation changes. You’d need to join Robinhood Gold at $5 per month or $50 per year to qualify for the sweepstakes. The membership comes with several perks: a 3.50% rate on uninvested cash, a 3% match on IRA contributions (though you must keep your Gold membership active for a year to retain this benefit), lower mortgage rates, and access to Morningstar research and margin investing.

Because you can cancel after one month, it’s possible to enter the sweepstakes with just that $5 cost plus the effort of moving funds into your account. Whether that’s worth the trouble depends on how badly you want a shot at the gold bar prizes.

As with all sweepstakes, it’s important to keep perspective: The odds of winning one of the gold bars are extremely small. If you don’t find the benefits of Gold membership or a Robinhood brokerage account appealing on their own merits, the sweepstakes alone probably isn’t worth the hassle.

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