Robinhood knows the value of striking while the iron is hot. A day after the popular but controversial stock trading app agreed to pay $70m to settle regulatory allegations that it has misled customers, it dropped the paperwork for its long-awaited initial public offering. 

The IPO prospectus is chock-full of eye-catching numbers that the Silicon Valley start-up is hoping to parlay into a $40bn-plus valuation.

Revenue more than tripled to $958m last year as stuck-at-home Americans passed their time stock trading. That explosive growth has continued in 2021. Revenue already topped $522m in the first quarter. A viral meme-stock and cryptocurrency trading boom helped the platform to more than double the number of funded accounts over the past 12 months to 18m.