That led to a 232% increase in crypto-related a revenue to $126 million, a primary factor, said the company, in driving overall first quarter transaction-based revenue up 59% year-over-year to $329 million.

Robinhood had $26.2 billion in user's crypto in custody as of March 31, a 78% jump from the end of 2023.

The larger transaction revenue due to crypto trading isn't surprising as another publicly traded crypto peer, Coinbase (COIN), also reported "blowout" first quarter numbers due to improving crypto market conditions.

Robinhood also handily beat its first-quarter sales and earnings estimates. The company reported $618 million in revenue in the quarter, ahead of analyst estimates of $552.7 million, according to FactSet data. First quarter earnings were $0.18 per share, topping the average analyst expectation of $0.06.

Shares of Robinhood were up about 7% in post-market trading on Wednesday, while Coinbase shares were down slightly. HOOD stock has risen about 40% for the year, while COIN has gained 22%.

The company last week disclosed receipt of a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission for its crypto unit.

Robinhood's CFO Jason Warnick said during an earnings conference call that "we're, of course, disappointed to have received the notice." However, he noted that the Well Notice has no impact on the customer accounts and that it is "business as usual" for the company's crypto arm.

"We've been very conservative in our approach in terms of points listed and services offered. And we're a highly regulated company and have applied the same legal and compliance standards we use for our brokerage to the way we run our crypto. So it's disappointing to see more regulation by enforcement," Warnick added.

UPDATE (May 8, 21:27 UTC): Updates to add CFO comments from earnings conference call.

Robinhood Earnings Exchange SEC

Aoyon Ashraf

Aoyon Ashraf is CoinDesk's managing editor for Breaking News. He spent almost a decade at Bloomberg covering equities, commodities and tech. Prior to that, he spent several years on the sellside, financing small-cap companies. Aoyon graduated from University of Toronto with a degree in mining engineering. He holds ETH and BTC, as well as ALGO, ADA, SOL, OP and some other altcoins which are below CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.