Robinhood’s crypto revenue plunged 38%, but a sudden explosion in options trading saved its record quarter

Robinhood's crypto-related transaction revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024 generated $358 million of the company's $672 million in transaction-based revenue, about 53% of the total.

That concentration had flipped by the second quarter of 2026, when crypto revenue fell 38% year over year to $100 million and accounted for just 12.9% of transaction-based revenue.

Options reached $342 million, event contracts brought in $156 million, and equities added $129 million, together producing 81% of the segment and six times what crypto contributed. Net interest revenue and other revenue, driven in part by Gold subscriptions, added $389 million and $143 million, respectively.

Crypto's new job in the stack

Robinhood reported $40 billion in total crypto notional volume for the quarter, and Bitstamp shows where most of it went. The Robinhood app supplied $18 billion of that, down 35% year over year, with Bitstamp now supplying the larger share at $22 billion.

That volume sits inside a wider structure Robinhood has been assembling: Bitstamp for institutional liquidity and international reach, Robinhood Wallet for self-custodial access to on-chain products, and Robinhood Chain for settlement and programmability.

Stock tokens bring equities onto those same rails, and Earn and perpetuals add lending and derivatives on top. The original Robinhood app still anchors the structure, with nearly 30 million investment accounts.

With that structure in place, Robinhood now earns across a broader financial business that runs partly on crypto rails.

Institutional exchange volume, the kind Bitstamp brings, can carry a lower monetization rate than retail app trading. Crypto revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024 amounted to roughly $5 million per $1 billion in notional volume.

By the second quarter of 2026, that figure had fallen to about $2.5 million per $1 billion. That gap points to Bitstamp adding reach and infrastructure well before it adds comparable revenue.

The memecoin run inside the infrastructure story

Robinhood Chain went live as a public mainnet on July 1, an Arbitrum-based layer-2 network designed for tokenized stocks, real-world assets (RWA), DeFi lending, and AI-native finance. The first major burst of activity came from something else entirely.

CASHCAT, a memecoin tied to Robinhood's old “CashCat” origin story, reached over $227 million in market cap and sparked a run of memecoins inside Robinhood Chain.

A Dune dashboard shows that spot DEX volume on Robinhood Chain reached nearly $370 million on July 29, driven mainly by memecoins.

On the same day, token deployments across multiple launchpads surpassed 29,000 entries, with Pons accounting for 14,751 launches.

That memecoin trading generated real activity: Robinhood Chain handled over $2.6 billion in decentralized exchange volume over seven days.

DefiLlama shows that stablecoin supply on the network surpassed $500 million over the same period, and Chain revenue topped $1 million over the past seven days.

CASHCAT's market value of $45 million, even after an 80% drawdown from its price peak, is over 60% larger than the nearly $28 million in tokenized RWA market cap on the network.

The chain as the real test

Stock tokens trade on Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, are available 24 hours a day, and can be used as collateral in DeFi lending pools.

Robinhood describes them as tokenized debt securities that provide economic exposure to the underlying shares, without conferring legal or beneficial ownership. They are also unavailable in the US and restricted in several other jurisdictions.

The mix of stock-token holders, lending assets, memecoins, and recurring DEX volume will show what kind of activity the network can sustain after the initial rush fades.

Robinhood now has trading volume flowing through both its apps and its chain, creating a valuation challenge.

In the bull case, Robinhood's next quarterly earnings report begins to reflect the full stack built on Robinhood Chain, including the memecoin rush, stock tokens, stablecoins, Earn, and perpetuals.

In that scenario, RWA market cap would climb, stock-token volume would grow, stablecoin supply would hold, memecoin activity would remain solid, and chain revenue would persist. Gold subscriptions, which grew 39% year over year to 4.8 million this quarter, would provide another supporting signal. Investors would start pricing Robinhood Chain as credible, durable infrastructure.

In the bear case, the memecoin mania fades too sharply, DEX volume drops, and RWA adoption stays thin. CASHCAT-style tokens collapse, launchpad deployments fall, stablecoin supply leaves the network, and chain revenue declines with it. Investors would file Robinhood Chain away as a brief attention spike after launch.

Robinhood's record quarter was driven by options, event contracts, and equities, with crypto trading now a minor line item.

Robinhood Chain shows that the infrastructure Robinhood designed for tokenized finance is capturing attention and revenue, making it trickier to assess the role crypto plays in the firm's earnings.

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