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Robinhood misses earnings, but crypto beats, Robinhood Chain soars on positive outlook
Although Robinhood reported misses on both revenue and EPS on Tuesday, the broader crypto market outperformed expectations.
More notably, developments during the earnings call provided significant positive signals for Robinhood Chain.
Revenue reached a record $1.42 billion, slightly under the projected $1.43 billion. Earnings per share were $0.51, falling short of the $0.55 forecast. Crypto revenue increased to $120 million from $100 million in Q2, marking a 20% sequential rise, though it remains 55% below the $268 million recorded last year.
Trading volume totaled $50 billion, with Bitstamp accounting for $29 billion of that activity. Event contracts represent an increasingly significant business segment, achieving $173 million, up from $156 million, supported by a record 16.4 billion contracts traded, which is more than seven times the volume from a year prior.
Over one-fifth of Robinhood's revenue now derives from products that were virtually nonexistent just two years ago, encompassing both prediction markets and crypto offerings.
During the call, Vlad Tenev acknowledged that Robinhood Chain surpassed internal projections. Launched on July 1, the chain generated more fees over a rolling 30-day period in late August than both Ethereum and Base. Tenev noted the necessity of staffing up to maintain pace, stating that builders have indicated Robinhood could achieve more.
Tenev expressed confidence, stating, “You should expect to see us really ramping the investment, because you just don’t see growth of a new ecosystem like this. It’s an uncommon thing. A lot of chains have launched over the past few months that have had an incomparably small level of traction compared to this. So we’re doubling down.” He further speculated, “Imagine if you take a stock token, make it fully programmable just like software. What can you do? Can you have tokenized options contracts?”
This commentary resonated strongly with proponents of Robinhood Chain, causing the chain leaders to surge between 20-50% across the board. Pons rose 18%, AI (Long) increased by 33%, and Orbio jumped 57%. The implicit message was that Robinhood views tokenized equities not merely as a feature but as a fundamental building primitive.
Existing projects, such as Long.xyz pairing meme coins against tokenized NVDA and TSLA, and Orbio funding AI inference credits using tokenized Nvidia fees, demonstrate this utility, even though these initiatives originated externally. These activities are now expected to receive greater backing from the Robinhood team, evidenced by two recent tweets from Robinhood Crypto supporting Long and Priors.
This suggests that while the financial metrics for the quarter may have been disappointing, the strategic direction articulated during the earnings call represents a substantial positive development for the ecosystem.
These developments underscore a broader trend where institutional and platform attention is shifting toward enabling novel financial primitives within decentralized infrastructure.
Why it matters
The strong performance and strategic messaging around Robinhood Chain suggest a significant shift in the company's focus toward decentralized infrastructure. This indicates that regulatory and market attention should now focus on how this new ecosystem will be governed and integrated with traditional finance products.
