Robinhood reported an almost 500% quarter-over-quarter jump in revenue from cryptocurrency transactions on Wednesday as the online brokerage and trading app announced a record-breaking quarter for profit and revenue.
Crypto revenue rose to a record $358 million in Q4, and overall revenue skyrocketed 37% to $1.01 billion from the previous quarter. With an earnings per share of $1.01, the trading app posted a net income of $916 million and beat analysts’ predictions of 42 cents, according to data from the Wall Street Journal.
Year over year, Robinhood’s revenue more than doubled. In after-hours trading, shares jumped almost 7% to nearly $60. Its stock is up more than 360% since the beginning of 2024.
“We hit the gas on product development in 2024,” Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood, said in a statement.
Robinhood’s fourth-quarter record-breaking returns follow a surge in crypto trading on its platform as mom-and-pop investors flocked to Robinhood in 2024 amid a crypto bull market.
Crypto fees for the company hit close to a three-year low in the third quarter of 2023, accounting for $23 million, before climbing to $126 million in the beginning of 2024.
The company’s current record quarter for crypto eclipsed its previous high-water mark in 2021, when Robinhood posted $233 million amid an earlier bull market that was marked by a surge in Dogecoin trading on its platform.
Digital assets have been a major business line for Robinhood for more than five years.
In 2018, the company began to let users buy and sell Bitcoin and Ether, the world’s two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
The firm eventually expanded the number of digital assets it offered users and listed Solana, Polygon, and Cardano, among other tokens. It also unveiled a crypto wallet and created its own crypto payment rails, which allow customers on other crypto apps to buy digital assets through Robinhood.
The company’s crypto ambitions have landed it in the crosshairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In February 2023, the regulator issued subpoenas to Robinhood concerning its crypto business. One year later, in May 2024, agency lawyers notified the online brokerage that they had recommended that the SEC pursue litigation against the firm.
However, after the election of Donald Trump, the regulator has signaled a change in its combative crypto policy, as Mark Uyeda, the acting chairman, announced a new crypto task force in January to hammer out rules for the industry.
And Tenev, Robinhood’s CEO, has remained consistent in his belief that crypto is part of finance’s future. He believes tokenization, when financial assets are put on blockchains, is the “next transition” for financial services, he toldFortune in July.
