Author: Artemis Analytics
Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow
DeepOcean Summary: In just one month since its launch, Robinhood Chain has surged to become the third-largest DEX by trading volume—but its wallets are filled with animal coins and air coins. A long-time shareholder who invested in Robinhood back in 2019 is alarmed: Don’t repeat the mistakes of the 2021 meme stock frenzy; tokenized stocks are the true path to generating over $10 billion in revenue by 2030 and serving 100 million users worldwide.
Dear Vlad and Johann:
Robinhood Chain, launched less than a month ago, has made a swift start in its mission to make finance accessible to everyone:
- Daily active addresses exceed 300,000
- Spot DEX daily trading volume exceeds $1 billion (ranked third on-chain)
- Stablecoin supply exceeds $300 million
- On-chain daily fees exceed $40 million annualized
- TVL exceeds $300 million, contributed by protocols such as Morpho, Ethena, and Uniswap.
I invested in Robinhood’s pre-IPO round back in 2019 while at Whale Rock Capital, and I covered Coinbase’s IPO roadshow in 2020. My goal in founding Artemis is to direct attention toward assets in the crypto and stock markets that offer genuine, lasting value—rather than chasing memecoins.
Last week, I opened my Robinhood wallet and was both shocked and saddened—it basically only allows trading of memecoins, and after buying just $CASCHAT for three days, I was airdropped a bunch of meaningless tokens, one of which was even called "Pointless Coin."
That's right, Robinhood is now the third-largest spot DEX by trading volume.
But the bulk of DEX trading volume still comes from memecoins (animal coins, Vlad-themed coins, Robinhood-themed coins, and other various memes). So please, Robinhood, don’t build a memecoin chain.
Robinhood Crypto can learn a lot from Coinbase’s Base chain—Base remains a much larger chain today.
Brian Armstrong even emphasized further in his response to guide people toward truly sustainable use cases.
I understand the appeal—memecoins are indeed an effective way to attract early users and draw in partners who bring liquidity and trading volume (they come for the meme, then stay for the real applications). Large independent projects like Aerodrome have thrived on Base, dominating trading volume and establishing genuine business models.
But memecoins can cause people to lose money and erode trust.
Look at the memecoins launched on Base at the beginning of 2024—they’ve dropped another 90% this year, falling 99% from their peak in early 2024.
Memecoins are not sustainable, harm customers, and further drive retail investors away from blockchain.
Moreover, Memecoins on Robinhood Chain will reinforce the stereotype of Wall Street and hedge funds—that Robinhood is the trading app embroiled in the GME/meme stock frenzy in early 2021.
This tweet is not helpful at all:
Wall Street has always found Robinhood hard to understand. Don’t double down on damaging the brand in 2021.
Instead, focus liquidity and attention on the Robinhood wallet and ecosystem, highlighting Arcus (formerly the dYdX team, an early leading perpetual DEX) and tokenized stocks. I greatly appreciate that Arcus today enables anyone worldwide to trade spot tokenized stocks.
These stocks have only risen and never declined over the past decade.
Truly prioritize RWA as Robinhood’s chain focus to enable more investors to trade stocks and pre-IPO companies, expanding financial accessibility. Teams like RWA.xyz and Artemis are eager to help highlight these use cases.
Robinhood's biggest bearish argument is that it has saturated the U.S. market—27 million funded accounts—with Wall Street forecasting only 31 to 32 million by fiscal year 2028, insufficient for explosive growth.
My bullish thesis on Robinhood is that, through Robinhood Chain, it can reach over 100 million international investors who can now invest in RWA, prediction markets, stablecoins, public companies, and pre-IPO shares as the top of the funnel for the Robinhood app.
There is real demand for 24/7/365 tokenized stock trading—just look at Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid, where people primarily trade real companies like SK Hynix, which generates $68 billion in annual revenue.
If Robinhood grows to 100 million monthly active users by 2030 via Robinhood Chain, with a current ARPU of $171, and assumes lower ARPU for international users (since they pay on-chain fees rather than trading through the Robinhood app, which carries higher fees)—estimated at $100—consumer revenue alone could reach $10 billion by 2030, exceeding Wall Street’s forecast of $8.78 billion for fiscal year 2029.
Vlad and Johann, you have the opportunity to realize cryptocurrency's promise through asset tokenization—enabling anyone to participate in finance.
Don’t ruin Robinhood by turning it into a memecoin chain.
Wall Street, your clients, and the world will thank you.
Robinhood users since 2017