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

Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) posted a record second quarter of 2026 even though its crypto business shrank sharply. Crypto transaction revenue fell 38% year over year to $100 million. Options, event contracts and equities more than covered the gap. For anyone following HOOD stock, crypto is no longer the main driver of Robinhood’s trading revenue. It now matters more as infrastructure: an exchange, a wallet and a blockchain that the company is still working out how to monetize.

Quick take

• Crypto revenue fell to $100 million, only 12.9% of transaction-based revenue.
• Options, event contracts and equities together produced 81% of the segment, about six times what crypto contributed.
• Robinhood Chain’s first busy weeks were driven mostly by memecoins. The open question is whether that activity lasts once the launch rush fades.

How the revenue mix flipped

At the end of 2024, Robinhood was close to a crypto trading company. In the fourth quarter of that year, crypto produced $358 million of $672 million in transaction-based revenue, a little over half. Eighteen months later the split had reversed. Total transaction revenue was higher at $776 million, but crypto supplied barely one dollar in eight.

Options trading did most of the work. At $342 million, options alone brought in more than three times what crypto did. On the stock and ETF options most retail customers trade, Robinhood charges no per-contract commission. Index options carry a $0.50 per-contract fee, or $0.35 with a Gold subscription. Options revenue therefore depends mostly on how much customers trade, not on headline commissions.

Event contracts were the second-largest line at $156 million. These are contracts that pay out based on the outcome of a specific event. Equities added $129 million, so ordinary stock trading now also earns Robinhood more than crypto does.

Outside transaction revenue, net interest revenue contributed $389 million and other revenue $143 million. Gold subscriptions drive part of that “other” line. Gold subscribers grew 39% year over year to 4.8 million. Interest and subscriptions give the business income that does not depend on any single asset class being in favor with traders.

Why more crypto volume earned less

Robinhood reported $40 billion in total crypto notional volume for the quarter, but the mix of where it traded changed. The Robinhood app handled $18 billion, down 35% from a year earlier. Bitstamp, the exchange Robinhood acquired, handled the larger share at $22 billion.

That shift explains much of the revenue drop. Bitstamp serves institutional clients and markets outside the US, and institutional exchange flow typically earns a lower take rate than retail app trading. On the reported figures, crypto revenue per $1 billion of notional volume was roughly $5 million in Q4 2024. In Q2 2026 it was about $2.5 million ($100 million divided by $40 billion). Bitstamp is adding reach and liquidity faster than it is adding revenue.

Bitstamp is one layer of a broader crypto stack Robinhood has assembled:

Read this way, crypto’s job inside Robinhood is no longer to generate most of the trading revenue. It now provides rails that other products can run on.

Robinhood Chain’s memecoin start

Robinhood Chain launched as a public mainnet on July 1. It is a layer-2 network built on Arbitrum, designed for tokenized stocks, real-world assets (RWAs), DeFi lending and what Robinhood calls AI-native finance.

The first real surge came from memecoins. CASHCAT, a token referencing Robinhood’s early “CashCat” origin story, climbed above a $227 million market cap and set off a wave of memecoin launches on the network. On July 29, Dune data showed spot DEX volume on Robinhood Chain near $370 million for the day, mostly from memecoins. That same day, launchpads recorded more than 29,000 new token deployments, and a single launchpad, Pons, accounted for 14,751 of them.

The activity produced measurable numbers over a seven-day window:

• More than $2.6 billion in decentralized exchange volume.
• Stablecoin supply on the network above $500 million, per DefiLlama.
• Chain revenue above $1 million.

The mix is lopsided. After an 80% drawdown from its peak, CASHCAT still carried a market value of about $45 million. That is more than 60% larger than the roughly $28 million of tokenized RWAs on the network, the asset class the chain was built to host.

Stock tokens and the real test for the chain

Stock tokens are the clearest test of whether Robinhood Chain can do what it was designed for. They trade through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, are available 24 hours a day, and can be posted as collateral in DeFi lending pools.

Their legal structure is important for anyone considering them. Robinhood describes stock tokens as tokenized debt securities that give economic exposure to the underlying shares. They do not confer legal or beneficial ownership of those shares. They are not available in the US and are restricted in several other jurisdictions. Holding a token is a claim with different rights and risks than holding the stock in a brokerage account.

The following signals will show whether the chain’s early activity turns into a durable business or fades after the launch:

In the optimistic scenario, the next quarterly report begins to reflect the full stack. RWA market cap and stock-token volume rise, stablecoin balances hold, memecoin trading stays active, and chain revenue persists. Continued Gold growth would add support, and investors could start valuing Robinhood Chain as lasting infrastructure.

In the pessimistic scenario, the memecoin mania cools too quickly. DEX volume falls, CASHCAT-style tokens collapse, launchpad deployments dry up, stablecoins leave, and chain revenue shrinks with them. Robinhood Chain would then look like a post-launch attention spike rather than a business line.

Either way, crypto’s place in Robinhood’s results is harder to read than it used to be. The trading line has become small next to options and event contracts. The infrastructure behind it is drawing attention and some revenue but has not yet shown it can last. To compare Robinhood’s crypto trading with other venues, see our guide to the best crypto exchanges and apps. For wider market context, follow the latest crypto news.

BitcoinBTC$65,064EthereumETH$1,823SolanaSOL$71.71

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