Author: Prathik Desai
Compiled and organized by BitpushNews
Multicoin Capital general partner Shayon Sengupta recently revealed on the Hood House podcast that the firm is aggressively long Robinhood (HOOD), and HOOD has now become the firm’s largest public market stock position.
I once referred to Robinhood as a "financial supermarket" because it met every financial need of Americans under one roof; its newly launched blockchain doesn't need to generate massive revenue on its own—so long as it can connect its dozen-plus services and cross-sell products to its 28 million+ funded accounts.
I still believe this argument is on the right track, but it has underestimated the scale by an order of magnitude.
As I watched Robinhood’s second-quarter earnings call from halfway across the globe, it struck me that the concept of a “financial supermarket” even undersells the heights this company may soon reach. A supermarket thrives by drawing more people through its doors; Robinhood’s second-quarter performance shows that its growth comes from getting the same users—who originally opened the Robinhood app to buy product A—to buy more of A, buy A more frequently, and increasingly become interested in buying products B, C, and D on Robinhood.
Because the company is able to do this, it continues to thrive even though it hasn't attracted a large number of new first-time users recently.
This article will reveal the underlying “machine” behind Robinhood’s supermarket—how it has gradually turned each customer into a higher-density revenue node—and why the company’s two lowest-margin initiatives launched (or coming soon) this year—blockchain and the built-in social platform Robinhood Social—may become the most crucial pieces of the puzzle.
Evaluation criteria
In just five years since going public and 11 years since launching its app, Robinhood has surpassed $5 billion in annual revenue. By contrast, brokerage giant Charles Schwab took nearly 30 years—from its founding in 1971—to reach $5 billion in annual revenue. One of Robinhood’s biggest revenue drivers is its vast distribution network of 30 million funded accounts. It offers an exceptionally broad product lineup, from memecoin trading to gold and retirement accounts, catering to users of all ages and backgrounds. For most companies, these metrics would already signal formidable distribution strength. Yet, the company does not intend to measure its progress by these indicators.
At the beginning of the earnings call, Robinhood’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Shiv Verma, told investors that the company should be evaluated based on three metrics: net deposits, the Rule of 40, and the number of business lines with an annualized revenue run rate of $100 million or more.
In the second quarter of 2026, Robinhood’s desktop trading and analytics platform, Legend, and its credit card business joined the “$100 million ARR club” as the latest additions. The company now has 13 business lines on this list.
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But let’s set aside these macro indicators and look at some more micro-level data.
By the end of the second quarter of 2026, Robinhood’s funded customer base increased by 7% year-over-year, rising from 26.5 million to 28.4 million. During the same period, average revenue per user (ARPU) surged by 24%, increasing from $151 to $187.
The revenue growth generated by individual customers is more than three times faster than the growth of the customer base.
The trading data also reflects this. Robinhood’s second-quarter trading volume per individual customer showed a 56% year-over-year increase in the notional value of stocks traded per trader and a 43% increase in the number of options contracts traded per trader. However, the number of customers trading stocks increased by only 13%, and the number of customers trading options increased by only 3%.
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Robinhood's event contracts business did not exist 15 months ago, but it has now generated $156 million in revenue, a 50%环比增长. And all of this was achieved without Robinhood acquiring a single new user.
In May of this year, I wrote that Robinhood’s ability to bundle stock, options, perpetual contracts, and event contracts enables it to offer a far superior “information pricing platform” than its competitors.
All of this suggests that the right metric for evaluating a company like Robinhood is how much it can sell per shopping cart in its financial supermarket—that’s the growth in its ARPU.
Gold breakout point
Although Robinhood has over a dozen services, one of its most critical growth drivers is its Gold membership subscription. Over the past just two years, the penetration rate of Robinhood Gold subscriptions has nearly doubled, increasing from 8.2% to 17% of its total funded customer base.
In the second quarter of 2026, the Gold subscription business generated $216 million in annualized subscription revenue, accounting for approximately 4% of total revenue. However, each Gold subscriber represents significantly higher potential value to the overall business, holding about 4.2 times more custodied assets and being about 3.1 times more likely to adopt retirement products compared to an average funds customer.
CFO Verma noted on the earnings call that 40% to 50% of Robinhood’s new customers, regardless of which product initially attracted them, sign up for the Gold membership.
This demonstrates Robinhood’s cross-selling moat. Even if customers initially come for commission-free stocks, World Cup prediction markets, or a credit card offering 3% cash back, one in every two customers converts to a Gold member. Once they subscribe to this $5 monthly service, they join an exclusive community of 4.8 million members, enjoying benefits such as lower-cost options contracts, employer-matched 3% IRA contributions, a 3.5% annual percentage yield (APY) on bank cash, and more.
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This cross-adoption can be precisely measured. Verma notes that customers of prediction markets are more likely to also have retirement accounts on Robinhood. Therefore, someone placing a bet on a soccer match on Robinhood’s prediction market is also using Robinhood’s retirement account to achieve compound growth in their IRA.
Robinhood’s financial supermarket does not rigidly segment its customers into “gamblers” and “serious investors.” It sells products to the same customers, and each product they use increases the likelihood they’ll use another.
Despite having such a powerful distribution moat, I still believe Robinhood has not yet made its most exciting move.
Two key catalysts
I previously believed that its blockchain itself generated almost no revenue and didn’t need to. I envisioned Robinhood Chain as a connectivity layer to make other businesses more sticky. After reviewing the second-quarter earnings report, I will slightly adjust my outlook for Robinhood. Its blockchain and the upcoming Robinhood Social will be the two largest catalysts driving cross-selling across its entire product suite and boosting over a dozen underlying businesses.
Imagine the power enabled by blockchain: a customer purchases a tokenized stock, which then serves as collateral on a lending market. The borrowed funds are directly used to establish a perpetual futures position. One dollar crosses three different products within a single session, and the funds never leave the application. In the past, in a fragmented brokerage ecosystem, these three actions occurred in three separate, isolated places—each requiring user registration and forcing customers to make entirely new decisions. Composability eliminates this friction.
Blockchain weaves cross-selling directly into the underlying infrastructure, enabling customers to self-cross-sell with minimal or zero friction.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said the company plans to open its Social feed to the public by the end of the third quarter. Tenev expects this internal social feed to add greater credibility to trading insights, as content on the platform will be backed by verifiable, real-time portfolio holdings from within Robinhood’s own trading ecosystem. Under traditional models, trading ideas typically originate externally—traders may get ideas from Twitter, podcasts, or friends, form an intent, and then come to Robinhood to execute. Robinhood Social brings this step directly inside its own “walled garden.”
This is the most underappreciated aspect of its social feed. The trust it builds among its 30 million funded users cannot be matched by any screenshots or podcasts on external platforms. When this social feed is launched to the public, the final external step in Robinhood’s funnel—the moment of generating trading intent—will also be completed internally.
I do not view Robinhood Chain and Social as separate business lines. Instead, I see them as catalysts that activate all other businesses. A community of 30 million people discussing the latest event contracts, sharing lifestyles built through disciplined retirement accounts, and exchanging the latest stock tokens—offering them pre-IPO investment opportunities in unlisted companies like Anthropic—will inspire desire and urgency in other users far beyond any user acquisition marketing campaign.
Loyalty Script
Robinhood’s value capture strategy is very similar to what we see with Costco. As the third-largest retailer, Costco derives almost all of its profits almost entirely from membership fees, while its shelves operate nearly at cost—just to draw members in consistently. The neutral layer is not where the profit lies. But these neutral layers often create adjacent capacity, allowing value to accumulate there. Just as Costco’s shelves and product offerings encourage people to purchase memberships.
Robinhood Chain and Social serve as such neutral layers that create tiers of value accumulation. Both provide investors and traders with reasons to purchase a Robinhood Gold subscription and shop for a variety of products across the aisles of the financial supermarket.
For years, one of the biggest questions facing Robinhood has been its cyclical nature. Although Robinhood recorded record-breaking stock and options trading volumes in the second quarter, its cryptocurrency trading volume has declined for three consecutive quarters. Even on Robinhood Chain, over 80% of trading volume is still driven by meme coin speculation.
Skeptics may see a crisis in this, but I disagree.
Robinhood’s diversified and substantial (with $1 billion in ARR) revenue streams ensure that its integrated business is no longer at the mercy of market cycles. When trading volumes decline, interest-earning assets do not necessarily follow suit. Its margin book grew 127% year-over-year to $21.6 billion.
On platforms like Robinhood, prediction markets—originally driven primarily by sports and elections—have taken on a different form. A joint venture with Susquehanna International Group, called Rothera, has granted Robinhood a CFTC-regulated license to operate a prediction market exchange, enabling it to create its own event contracts. This allows the company to move beyond seasonal categories like sports and elections, offering year-round event contracts tied to macroeconomic indicators and S&P 500 announcements.
Gold subscription revenue is a fixed monthly income that is completely unaffected by monthly market performance. Robinhood spent five years consolidating these revenue streams, which peaked at different times, making the entire company more cyclical-resistant than any single business line.
This is directly reflected in the ARPU data. ARPU increased by 24% because each customer is now accessing more services on average; a customer accessing five unrelated revenue streams is, fundamentally, a more persistent and stable asset than one accessing only a single volatile revenue stream.
The more products each customer engages with, the smoother and more stable Robinhood’s revenue curve becomes. Each downturn in one business line is offset by a peak in another, often driven by the same user’s account.
Coinbase is merely redistributing crypto capital among existing consumers and institutions; traditional brokers own assets but cannot generate user engagement; Robinhood, however, occupies a uniquely singular position: it can transform a single customer relationship into a self-reinforcing and self-diversifying revenue node spanning both traditional and crypto businesses—both of which can be interconnected and amplified by its native blockchain.