Robinhood Takes on Coinbase: Who Will Dominate the U.S. Crypto Exchange Market?

Robinhood is "flourishing" in the crypto industry, showcasing the stature of the largest exchange in the U.S.

Written by: Joe Zhou, Foresight News

The position of the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. is about to change.

Previously, this position was almost exclusively held by Coinbase, but now Robinhood is taking its place and has surpassed it in multiple dimensions.

In September, Robinhood Chain's weekly revenue reached $15.85 million, surpassing the two top U.S. exchanges, Coinbase and Hyperliquid. The trading volume on Robinhood Chain has exceeded 750 million transactions. It’s worth noting that Robinhood Chain just launched on July 1, and by the end of July, its cumulative trading volume had already surpassed 150 million transactions, making it the fastest EVM chain to reach 100 million transactions in history.

Robinhood is rapidly expanding its presence in the U.S. crypto industry, already resembling the largest crypto exchange in the country.

Not only on-chain, but Robinhood is also flourishing across the crypto industry.

In the prediction market sector, Robinhood's second-quarter revenue from prediction markets surpassed that from crypto and stock trading, with its CEO calling it one of the fastest-growing businesses; in the tokenized stock sector, Robinhood Crypto has become a core player in the market, quickly accumulating over 328,000 holders since its launch on July 1, capturing a market share of 44%. Although the TVL of stock tokens is only $170 million, the number of users far exceeds that of Ondo and xStocks; in the on-chain market, it is even more aggressive, with related DEX trading volume nearing $50 billion, and recent weekly revenues exceeding $10 million. According to my statistics, since August, over six memecoins have surpassed $100 million, becoming the leading chain in this phase of the bull market.

If Coinbase's path is to gradually expand from a crypto exchange to an "Everything Exchange," then Robinhood's path is quite the opposite: it originally was a comprehensive trading platform for the public and is now moving more financial assets onto the chain.

Even more astonishing, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev previously revealed that after the launch of Robinhood Chain, it quickly surpassed 100 million transactions, becoming one of the fastest chains to reach this scale.

This is no longer a traditional brokerage "dabbling in Crypto."

Robinhood is transforming itself into a true player in crypto infrastructure.

Robinhood Chain: Becoming Robinhood's Most Aggressive Card

In recent years, the "first" of Ethereum Layer 2 has changed hands several times: from Arbitrum to Base, and now Robinhood Chain is becoming the new disruptor.

What’s more noteworthy is that Robinhood Chain has only been live for less than three months.

After launching its mainnet on July 1, it quickly surpassed 100 million transactions, and subsequently, its cumulative trading volume exceeded 750 million transactions, becoming the fastest EVM chain to reach this scale.

And this is just the beginning.

In July, Robinhood Chain's daily fee revenue was only $200,000; by early September, it had once exceeded $4 million, and in the following week, on-chain fee revenue further reached about $25 million; on September 1, the daily DEX trading volume reached approximately $1.595 billion, with on-chain DeFi deposits around $738 million, and stablecoin volume nearing $800 million.

Even the Meme market has begun to grow wildly on this new chain.

According to my statistics, since August, more than six memecoins with a market cap exceeding $100 million have emerged on Robinhood Chain. Among them, tokens like PONS, Artificial Inu, CASHCAT, MEME, INDEX, and FAMI have successively entered the billion-dollar market cap club. At the beginning of September, the largest launch platform on Robinhood Chain, PONS, had a market cap close to $1 billion, with a weekly increase of over 200%, driving the fees and DEX trading volume on the entire Robinhood Chain to surge simultaneously.

A Layer 2 that has been live for less than three months is simultaneously witnessing high fees, billions of dollars in on-chain transactions, and a batch of memecoins with market caps over $100 million.

This is also what makes Robinhood Chain so unique.

Past Layer 2s often first built the chain and then sought to attract users, assets, and liquidity; but Robinhood Chain was not designed to be a general-purpose public chain from the start, but rather aimed at bringing financial assets onto the chain.

When announcing its mainnet on July 1, Robinhood clearly positioned it as an Ethereum Layer 2 focused on financial services and real-world assets, with tokenized stocks, DeFi, and global market access as core scenarios.

In other words, Robinhood did not first build a chain and then look for users. It did the opposite—first having over 28 million deposit users, and then moving the assets and financial products these users might trade onto the chain.

By the end of August, Robinhood had approximately 28.6 million deposit customers and $38.37 billion in platform assets. During the same period, its nominal trading volume in Crypto reached $17.5 billion, a month-on-month increase of 61%; the trading volume of prediction market contracts reached 4.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of about 15 times.

This means that what is most noteworthy about Robinhood Chain is not just that "another Layer 2 has emerged."

But rather, Robinhood has finally established its own on-chain trading venue. This could greatly change Robinhood's business model.

In the past, users traded stocks and Crypto on Robinhood, and Robinhood primarily earned through trading revenue, interest income, and other means; but now, if users start trading, lending, providing liquidity, trading Memes, and using stablecoins on Robinhood Chain, then the "venue" where user transactions occur can also become a source of income for Robinhood.

This is why the revenue growth of Robinhood Chain is so noteworthy.

According to DeFiLlama data, Robinhood Chain's daily revenue rose from less than $200,000 at the end of August to about $4.01 million on September 2; in the following week, on-chain fees further surged to about $25 million.

Of course, there is a very interesting contrast here.

What Robinhood aims to build is a "financial-grade" chain serving financial assets and RWAs, but what truly helped it achieve a cold start is not RWA in the traditional sense, but a group of Memes.

This is somewhat ironic, yet very Crypto.

The explosion of Memes like PONS brought the first real transactions, liquidity, and fees to Robinhood Chain; and this traffic further attracted more assets and users onto the chain.

From this perspective, Robinhood seems to be following a path quite different from traditional Layer 2s: not first building infrastructure and then seeking users; but rather first having users and transactions, and then building the infrastructure.

First comes traffic, then transactions; first transactions, then liquidity; and finally, financial infrastructure.

Flourishing Everywhere, Partially Surpassing Coinbase

The real threat Robinhood poses to Coinbase does not lie in it creating a chain. Rather, it is that: it is simultaneously attacking multiple core businesses of Coinbase.

The most typical example is the prediction market.

In the second quarter of 2026, Robinhood's event contract revenue reached $156 million, a year-on-year increase of over 10 times, first surpassing the $100 million in Crypto trading revenue and also exceeding the $129 million in stock trading revenue. During the same period, Robinhood's total net revenue reached $1.308 billion, a year-on-year increase of 32%.

By August, Robinhood's prediction market still recorded a trading volume of 4.7 billion contracts, a year-on-year increase of 15 times.

This means that Crypto is no longer Robinhood's most important "new business." The prediction market has instead taken the lead.

Coinbase is also rapidly entering this market. In the second quarter, Coinbase's prediction market contracts and revenue grew by 106% quarter-on-quarter, with annualized revenue exceeding $100 million.

The two companies are beginning to collide head-on on the same track.

But Robinhood's advantage lies in its ability to directly integrate the prediction market with stocks, options, and Crypto into the same account. Users can trade Nvidia in the morning, buy BTC in the afternoon, bet on the World Cup in the evening, and continue trading stocks over the weekend.

The boundaries between financial assets are disappearing. What Robinhood is doing is erasing all these boundaries.

Tokenized stocks are similar.

On July 1, Robinhood expanded Stock Tokens to over 120 countries and regions, allowing global users to gain on-chain economic exposure to U.S. stocks.

Within about a month of launching, Robinhood's tokenized stock holders reached approximately 328,000, accounting for about 44% of the holders of major tokenized stock platforms at that time. The total number of holders in the tokenized stock market grew by 92% within 30 days, reaching about 752,000.

However, there is a very noteworthy detail here. Robinhood's "user count" leading does not mean its "funding scale" is leading.

At that time, Robinhood's tokenized stock asset scale was about $44 million, significantly lower than Ondo's $857 million and xStocks' $487 million. According to DWF Labs data, Robinhood's average holding per holder was only about $134, while Securitize's average asset scale per holder was close to $4.9 million.

This precisely illustrates Robinhood's most unique capability: it is not the best at serving whales, but rather the best at turning financial products into consumer goods.

This is also a competition that Coinbase cannot ignore.

Coinbase still holds a very strong advantage in Crypto native users, institutional clients, stablecoins, and on-chain infrastructure. In the second quarter of 2026, Coinbase's Crypto trading market share reached 10.3%, a historic high; its USDC product average holding reached $20 billion, and Subscription Services revenue reached $555 million.

Therefore, the war between the two companies is becoming increasingly clear: Coinbase is expanding from Crypto into the entire financial world. Robinhood, on the other hand, is expanding from retail finance into the Crypto and on-chain world. The two paths ultimately converge at the same endpoint.

Robinhood's Next Stop: A New Paradigm for Exchanges

On September 29, Robinhood announced a series of new product plans: expanding stock trading hours to weekends, launching perpetual contracts, increasing prediction market products based on corporate earnings, and further promoting AI trading agents. Some features still require regulatory approval.

If all these products are implemented, then Robinhood's landscape can hardly be defined as just a "brokerage."

Stocks, options, Crypto, prediction markets, perpetual contracts, tokenized stocks, on-chain DeFi, AI Agents... almost all financial products that can generate trading behavior can be integrated into the same account.

This is the real issue that Coinbase needs to face. Because Coinbase is also doing the same thing.

It has clearly proposed the strategy of "Everything Exchange" and continues to expand into derivatives, prediction markets, stablecoins, payments, RWAs, and on-chain finance. In the second quarter of 2026, its trading revenue was no longer highly dependent on BTC spot, with 88% of net revenue coming from non-BTC spot trading-related businesses; Subscription Services revenue has reached $555 million.

In other words, Coinbase has not stood still. The real change is in the competitive dimension.

In the past, when comparing Coinbase and Robinhood, people compared whose Crypto business was stronger.

Now, that comparison can no longer be made. The more accurate question should be: When stocks, Crypto, prediction markets, and RWAs all eventually enter the chain, who will become the unified trading entry point?

Robinhood's advantage is its users. By the end of August, it had already amassed 28.6 million deposit customers and $384 billion in platform assets. Coinbase's advantage, on the other hand, lies in its Crypto native infrastructure. It has exchanges, wallets, Base, USDC ecosystem, institutional custody, derivatives, and an increasingly complete on-chain financial infrastructure. In the second quarter, its Crypto market share even continued to set historical highs.

Therefore, it is still too early to say that Robinhood has "replaced Coinbase." Even the title of "the largest crypto exchange in the U.S." is becoming increasingly ambiguous.

Because what Robinhood is changing may precisely be the concept of "crypto exchanges."

In the past, exchanges were like a house. Users entered Coinbase, bought BTC, ETH, and then left. In the future, exchanges will resemble a city. Stocks, Crypto, prediction markets, stablecoins, tokenized assets, DeFi, derivatives, and AI Agents will all flow within, and users may not even need to know whether they are in Web2 or Web3.

The significance of Robinhood Chain lies in this.

It connects Robinhood's traffic, products, and users directly to the open financial world of Crypto for the first time.

Meanwhile, Coinbase is extending its Crypto infrastructure into the traditional financial world. Therefore, the real focus of this war is not on who made a few hundred million dollars in fees this year. But rather, what the next generation of financial entry points will look like.

Coinbase aims to become the infrastructure connecting Crypto and traditional finance. Robinhood, on the other hand, wants to be the unified entry point for ordinary people into the entire financial world.

When the two companies finally meet on-chain, what may be redefined is not Coinbase, nor Robinhood. But rather, our past understanding of what an "exchange" truly is.

This content is provided for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Any events, rewards, online promotions, or related information mentioned herein should not be considered a recommendation, solicitation, or invitation to purchase, sell, trade, or otherwise deal in any crypto assets. Crypto assets are highly volatile and may result in loss. The availability of WEEX services, products, and related events may vary by region. You are responsible for ensuring that your participation is in accordance with applicable local laws and regulations.