Third-quarter (Q3) earnings for online investment and trading platform, Robinhood, showed growth performance, amid possible regulatory delays holding back adding more cryptocurrency coins to its soon-to-be-launched crypto wallets.
In terms of headline numbers, Robinhood added 660,000 new funded accounts during Q3 2021, bringing its net cumulative funded accounts to 22.4 million, a 97% increase year over year.
Its customer base nearly doubled since the end of last year, and monthly active users were up 76% year over year, hitting 18.9 million. That number is down from 21.3 million active users in its Q2, according to the earnings presentation Tuesday (Oct. 26).
“It’s been an incredible year, and we are still very early in our journey of democratizing finance for all,” CEO Vlad Tenev said during the Q3 earnings call Tuesday (Oct. 26), adding that the company saw huge interest in cryptocurrency, especially Dogecoin, leading to large numbers of new customers joining the platform.
He said historically, the company’s growth has come in waves, with surges experienced during periods of increased volatility or market events. and given that new customers join when new products and features are added, the company has “some degree of control over our growth,” he said, patterns they expect to persist going forward.
The firm has also begun the integration directly into its app of Robinhood Snacks, a widely consumed financial newsletter with over 23 million unique readers this quarter and announced its first big content distribution partnership with Snapchat, making Robinhood Snacks available to the millions on that platform.
Ensuring customer safety remains a key goal, and for over a year the firm has devoted most of its resources to safety first initiatives, most notably platform stability and service reliability.
Crypto Wallets Will be Simple and Safe
With over 1 million customers currently on the waitlist for its cryptocurrency wallet, Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick said the company is excited about the launch of the new offering, as it plans to roll out the first set to external customers “in the next few weeks … we expect to have wallets available to all customers in Q1 of next year.”
Related news: Robinhood CEO Says Over a Million Users Want to Try Its Crypto Wallet
He said the wallets will allow customers to take coins, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum that they’ve purchased on Robinhood, to participate in some of the other decentralized applications off-platform which allow access to coins that the company doesn’t offer.
Read more: Robinhood Pulls Fresh Growth Arrow From Its Quiver, Goes All in on Crypto Wallets
“We believe that by rolling out wallets, we will go a long way towards addressing the primary pain points that customers feel right now,” Warnick said, amid estimates that the product will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
But, he said the company is taking its precautions and will be monitoring the evolving regulatory environment for lending products, while carefully evaluating whether new crypto coins, which are unregulated securities, can be added in a way that’s safe for customers and in line with regulatory requirements.
“You’re not going to see us to be the first mover, particularly in this regulatory environment, until we get a bit more clarity,” he noted, saying that they want to make sure to do the right thing for everyone involved and particularly their stakeholders.
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