Robinhood Markets (HOOD) announced it was acquiring crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million in cash. The deal will broaden Robinhood's crypto and global exposure, with the company saying the acquisition is a "major step" in growing its crypto business and "better positions Robinhood to expand outside of the US."

In the video above, Yahoo Finance's Seana Smith and Brad Smith discuss the deal.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Morning Brief.

This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video Transcript

Let's take a look at Robin Hood because the company is pushing further into the crypto space.

We're looking at gains of just about 4% now.

This move higher, coming after the company announced plans to acquire Crypto exchange bit stamp in a $200 million deal.

Now, Brad, this is the latest of Robin Hood's FF efforts here to really expand.

You talk about them getting into the credit card business.

Recently, you talk about them, uh, launching retirement products.

So this is the latest in the line of that.

But the significance of this is that this is really the first foray into an international business.

So why are they doing that?

Robin Hood is saying that it's going to give them the opportunity here to enter this space with active and established relationships.

Also, with infrastructure and industry.

Leading products, as they describe it makes total sense.

I mean, you think about how they want to on the international front to reach more retail and institutional customers.

This will give them that access point into EU, UK, US and Asia as well Here and then additionally, you look at where they've leaned further into crypto as well, because remember here, for bits stamp, they're essentially known as this globally scaled crypto exchange.

So at the end of the day, with this deal expected to close in the first half of 2025 we'll see what the crypto market looks like.

And as a reminder coming off of the Q one earnings, where Robin Hood had talked about transaction based revenues increasing 59% year over year, that was primarily driven by Cryptocurrencies and the revenue that they saw there, which was up 232% during the quarter.

Here in crypto notional trading volumes also increased by 224% year every year during the quarter to $36 billion.

So no doubt, uh, they're going to lean further into where the growth opportunity is for this business.

This is where they had cited even coming into their life as a publicly traded company.

Anybody who remembers back to that S one filing and how much weight they have placed on where the crypto market moved and their ability to not only acquire new customers in that realm, but then retain them for that customer lifetime value as well.

This is another step in that direction,