Robinhood Seals the Deal: Acquires Bitstamp for $200M in Cash!

Holy smokes, folks! Robinhood just dropped a cool $200 million in cold, hard cash to scoop up Bitstamp, one of the oldest crypto exchanges on the planet. This ain't no small fry - we're talking a game-changer!

The deal, which was first thrown out there on June 2, now has Bitstamp's global ops sitting pretty under Robinhood's wing. Bitstamp's got more than 50 active licenses spread across the EU, UK, U.S., and Asia, and they're serving over half a million retail customers and around 5,000 institutional clients. Talk about reach!

Over the last year, ending April 30, Bitstamp raked in $95 million in net revenue, with the big bucks coming from those institutional trades. Robinhood's saying the integration will be "EBITDA-neutral" for now, meaning it won't mess with their earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation. But hold onto your hats, because they're expecting it to start boosting their earnings within a year, once everything's all mixed together. They're budgeting $65 million for operating expenses through the rest of 2025, mostly for integration and keeping the lights on.

"This Bitstamp buyout is a huge leap forward for our crypto biz," says Johann Kerbrat, the head honcho of Robinhood Crypto. "Bitstamp's been around the block, surviving market ups and downs, and they've got a rock-solid rep with both retail and institutional crypto investors."

Bitstamp's been kicking it since 2011, offering top-notch institutional services like lending, staking, and even white-label crypto infrastructure. Robinhood's got big plans to blend Bitstamp's tech with their own Smart Order Routing and Legend trading systems, setting the stage for even more institutional action.

"Bringing Bitstamp's platform and know-how into Robinhood's world is gonna give users an epic trading experience, all while sticking to our guns on compliance, security, and putting customers first."

— JB Graftieaux, Bitstamp CEO

This deal comes hot on the heels of Robinhood's $179 million agreement to snap up Canadian crypto platform WonderFi. That move's gonna beef up their regulated presence in North America, and they're expecting to close that one later this year.

With a whopping $927 million in crypto revenue just in Q1 of 2025, Robinhood's making some serious waves in the institutional and international digital asset markets. And get this - they're also cooking up blockchain-based systems to tokenize U.S. securities for European investors, eyeing Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum as potential platforms. Buckle up, crypto world - Robinhood's on a roll!