Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher
On July 1, 2026, at the Old Royal Naval College in London, online brokerage giant Robinhood held a landmark launch event titled "The World is Flat." At this event, the Robinhood Chain public mainnet officially launched, Stock Tokens were fully opened, Agentic Accounts were launched for US crypto users, and Robinhood Earn was simultaneously unveiled. On the same day, the company's stock price closed up 8.35%.
This is more than just a crypto product update. From initially launching cryptocurrency trading functionality in early 2018 to now launching its own Layer 2 public chain, Robinhood has completed a full path from initial exploration to deep dive. This path reflects the paradigm evolution of traditional financial giants' approach to the crypto world, from observation and contact to full integration. And Robinhood is precisely the most worthy example to dissect on this evolutionary curve.
... Phase One: Entering the Crypto World – From Trading Functionality to Own Wallet Robinhood's first encounter with cryptocurrency began in 2018. At that time, this internet brokerage firm, which had disrupted the US securities brokerage industry with its "zero commission" model, launched cryptocurrency trading functionality within its app. At the time, this seemed more like a natural extension of its product boundaries – users could trade stocks, options, and cryptocurrencies in the same account, forming the initial framework for a one-stop experience. However, the initial positioning of its crypto business was quite conservative. Robinhood only listed 15 crypto assets on its platform and never offered staking services. This caution stemmed from regulatory uncertainty – at that time, the US SEC's regulatory framework for crypto assets was still unclear, and Robinhood chose to test the waters with a minimal asset list, satisfying user needs while keeping compliance risks within an acceptable range. Further progress occurred around 2022. Robinhood launched its own cryptocurrency wallet, marking an upgrade in its crypto strategy from a "transaction channel" to an "asset gateway." The wallet's launch means users are no longer just buying and selling crypto assets on the Robinhood platform, but have true on-chain autonomy—assets can be deposited, transferred, and even used to participate in the broader DeFi ecosystem. This phase is significant for "positioning." Robinhood spent four years building its crypto infrastructure from scratch. While the functionality was relatively basic, it laid the groundwork for future full-scale expansion. More importantly, through the wallet product, Robinhood accumulated experience in on-chain user operations, laying the cognitive foundation for its future strategy of developing its own public chain. Phase Two: Embracing Crypto—Acquisitions, Investments, and Ecosystem Alliances If the first phase was "testing the waters," then from 2024 to 2025, Robinhood truly jumped into the pool. The most significant event was the announcement in June 2024 of the acquisition of the established, compliant exchange Bitstamp for $200 million in cash. This transaction was completed in the first half of 2025. Founded in 2011, Bitstamp is one of the most compliant exchanges in the industry, operating in Luxembourg, the UK, Singapore, and the US, and holding over 50 global crypto licenses. Following the acquisition, Robinhood expanded its supported crypto assets from 15 in the US and over 30 in Europe to over 85 on Bitstamp. More importantly, Bitstamp brought Robinhood institutional trading channels—90% of its trading volume came from institutional users, with an average fee of 5 basis points per trade. This meant that Robinhood's crypto business was no longer solely serving retail investors, but was entering the more profitable institutional market. Almost simultaneously, Robinhood also announced the acquisition of the Canadian platform WonderFi to expand into the North American market. While expanding internationally, Robinhood's operations in Europe have expanded from 4 countries to 30. On the investment front, Robinhood participated in Lighter's $68 million funding round in late 2025. Lighter is an on-chain perpetual and spot exchange founded by Vladimir Novakovski in 2022. This round was led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, valuing the company at approximately $1.5 billion post-money. Robinhood entered the fray as an investor, not merely a business partner—representing a deeper level of mutual benefit. On the product front, in June 2025, Robinhood launched Stock Tokens in the EU, allowing users to trade token versions of over 200 US stocks and ETFs. This product marked Robinhood's beginning to attempt to "on-chain" traditional financial assets. At this stage, Robinhood's crypto business began to contribute significantly to its financial performance. In the second quarter of 2025, the company's cryptocurrency trading revenue reached $160 million, a year-on-year increase of 98%, with a cryptocurrency trading volume of $35 billion. In the third quarter of 2025, cryptocurrency trading revenue further increased to $268 million, a year-on-year increase of 339%, with a cryptocurrency trading volume of $80 billion. Cryptocurrency business has become the core engine of Robinhood's performance growth. The strategic logic at this stage is clear: acquiring compliance licenses and institutional clients through acquisitions, binding core ecosystem partners through investment, and exploring the possibility of asset on-chaining through product innovation. Robinhood is no longer positioning itself as a "stock trading app with crypto features," but has begun to systematically build a comprehensive financial platform covering retail and institutional markets, spot and derivatives, and traditional and crypto assets. Phase Three: Deepening the Strategy – Robinhood Chain and its Ambition to Become "All Exchanges" On July 1, 2026, Robinhood reached a pivotal moment in its crypto strategy – the official launch of the Robinhood Chain public mainnet. This Layer 2 network, built on the Arbitrum technology stack, is geared towards tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and DeFi applications, and is also "perfectly suited for Meme Coin" (as stated by Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev). The launch of Robinhood Chain marks Robinhood's shift from an "access user" to a "builder" in its crypto strategy. In recent years, a common approach for financial companies entering the crypto industry has been to integrate with existing public blockchains—the platform handles users, the interface, and product packaging, while underlying settlement, gas, liquidity, and DeFi applications occur on external networks. This model allows for rapid deployment, but for Robinhood, which already has nearly 28 million accounts, a long-standing pain point has been that while users are on their own app, assets and liquidation occur on someone else's platform. Robinhood Chain was created to address this contradiction. It transforms Robinhood from an "interface provider" into a "financial track owner"—trading, liquidation, staking, yield, and asset flow all operate on its own blockchain. A complete ecosystem is taking shape around Robinhood Chain. On its first day of launch, dozens of crypto projects, including Uniswap, Chainlink, Lighter, 0x, LI.FI, and Rialto, announced integration with Robinhood Chain. dYdX, meanwhile, abandoned its original brand and launched the new Perp exchange Arcus. Reports indicate that the Robinhood Chain stablecoin market reached $246.97 million. Simultaneously, Stock Tokens were fully opened, allowing users to trade tokenized stocks in over 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet. Robinhood Earn allows users to borrow USDG stablecoins through self-custodied wallets, with an expected annualized yield of approximately 7%. Agentic Accounts allow qualified users to connect AI models to Robinhood's trading infrastructure. Thus, Robinhood has gradually integrated stocks, cryptocurrencies, tokenized assets, stablecoin yields, perpetual futures, prediction markets, and AI trading tools into a single financial account system. The company's CEO, Vlad Tenev, revealed that the company currently has nine product lines with annual revenues reaching hundreds of millions of dollars, covering stock trading, options, cryptocurrencies, Robinhood Gold subscriptions, cash management, instant withdrawals, tokenization, private banking, and prediction markets. This company, whose core identity was previously that of a zero-commission brokerage, is evolving towards the ultimate form of an "everything exchange." A Case Study of the Integration of Traditional Finance and the Crypto World. It's worth noting that while Robinhood launched its own public blockchain, crypto-native exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance were actively promoting the listing of tokenized stocks, attempting to bring traditional stock trading on-chain. Meanwhile, Robinhood is making in-depth progress into the crypto space by building its own public blockchain, launching perpetual contracts, and DeFi tools. Two paths are approaching the same goal from opposite directions: enabling users to simultaneously trade, hold, and generate returns on both traditional and crypto assets within the same system. More importantly, Robinhood's path reveals an increasingly clear industry trend: traditional financial institutions entering the crypto world are not merely seeking to integrate into an existing ecosystem, but rather hoping to leverage their years of accumulated compliance capabilities, brand reputation, user base, and global channels to rebuild their own financial systems on-chain. This poses a significant threat to existing crypto giants. From cautious token listings in 2018 to building its own public chain in 2026, Robinhood has taken eight years to "reverse the roles" in the crypto world. Its journey reveals an unavoidable endgame: when the massive vessels of traditional finance sail into the crypto ocean, their task is not to integrate into the existing on-chain world, but to rebuild a new continent beneath their feet, relying on their compliance structures and massive user base. This approach of using users to control protocols may well become the dominant narrative of the integration of traditional finance and cryptography over the next decade.