Robinhood’s New Chain Sets Up Showdown With Coinbase in US Crypto

Coinbase and Robinhood are increasingly locked in a fierce battle in the US cryptocurrency industry.

Both companies support crypto trading, but they came from different starting points. Coinbase grew as an exchange centered on trading digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ether. Robinhood, by contrast, expanded through traditional financial products including stocks, exchange-traded funds and options.

That changed this year as the convergence of traditional finance and crypto gathered pace, pushing the two companies into direct competition in the same market.

Their recent moves underscore that shift. Coinbase earlier this year set a goal of building an "everything exchange." Robinhood, meanwhile, launched its own blockchain, Robinhood Chain, earlier in July, signaling its intention to expand deeper into crypto.

Lee Jun-ho, an analyst at Hana Securities, said Robinhood is evolving beyond a simple trading platform into a super app that spans tokenized stocks, ETFs and the distribution of real-world assets. In his view, that has effectively placed the company in head-to-head competition with Coinbase.

Earnings and Shares Diverge

First-quarter earnings released ahead of that full-scale rivalry gave Robinhood the edge over Coinbase. Robinhood said in April that first-quarter net revenue rose about 15% from a year earlier to $1.067 billion. Net income climbed about 3% to $346 million.

Coinbase, by contrast, posted first-quarter net revenue of $1.3 billion, down about 30% from a year earlier. The revenue drop dealt a heavy blow to profitability. Coinbase reported a net loss of $394.1 million in the quarter.

Market watchers attributed the split performance to a weak crypto market in the first quarter. Robinhood, which offers a broader range of financial products including stocks, was able to offset weaker crypto revenue. Coinbase, whose core business is crypto trading, was more exposed to the downturn.

The earnings gap was reflected in the stocks. According to Yahoo Finance, Robinhood shares closed at $115.54 on July 15, up 1.84% from the previous session. Even so, the stock was up just 0.3% from the start of the year.

Compared with its lowest closing price of the year, $65.16 at the end of March, the stock has jumped more than 77%. That means it recovered most of its losses from the first three months of the year in roughly three months.

Coinbase shares ended the session at $167.21, up 3.54% on the day. That was still more than 29% below the $236.53 level recorded at the start of the year. Compared with its year-to-date low close of $160.79 at the end of March, the rebound was only about 4%.

Can Robinhood Chain Challenge Base?

The next stage of the rivalry is expected to play out on blockchain infrastructure. Robinhood’s launch of its own chain amounts to a direct challenge to Base, Coinbase’s blockchain. Lee said both Base and Robinhood Chain are strategies aimed at keeping users inside their respective ecosystems. Competition to win users through those chains is set to intensify.

Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain built on Arbitrum. Robinhood plans to connect existing app and wallet users to the chain and offer a range of decentralized finance services within a single ecosystem.

Early demand has been strong. Robinhood Chain recorded about $3.1 billion in decentralized exchange trading volume during the first week after its mainnet launch, according to global investment bank Bernstein. That was enough to rank it among the top five blockchains by volume.

One of the clearest signs of that early momentum is CASHCAT, the first memecoin launched on the chain. Its market capitalization surged past $200 million in about 10 days. The token has since given up much of those gains and now trades at $0.10, but that price is still about 12,000% above its launch level.

Base still holds the lead in ecosystem depth. As of July 16, Base had 1,023 DeFi protocols listed, according to DefiLlama. Total value locked stood at about $4.585 billion.

Robinhood Chain, by comparison, had 62 listed protocols and about $190.6 million in TVL. By that measure, Base is about 24 times larger.

Robinhood Chain is closing the gap quickly in activity, however. Its decentralized exchange volume over the past 24 hours was about $797.5 million, versus about $879.9 million for Base. The difference was only about $100 million, underscoring how quickly Robinhood Chain is narrowing the gap despite its recent launch.

New Business Rivalry Heats Up

Competition is also intensifying in new business areas. At the center is real-world assets, or RWA, one of the most closely watched corners of crypto this year. RWA refers to technology that tokenizes assets such as stocks and commodities on blockchain networks.

Robinhood already launched more than 200 tokenized US stocks and ETFs in Europe in June 2025. It also drew market attention at the time by offering tokenized shares of SpaceX, which was still privately held.

Robinhood’s tokenized stocks do not confer shareholder rights, however. Holders therefore cannot exercise voting rights in the underlying companies.

Coinbase is moving to catch up. Base applied its B20 token standard to mainnet on July 8. B20 is designed to make it easier to issue a range of assets, including stablecoins and tokenized stocks. The move points to Coinbase’s plan to turn Base into infrastructure for issuing tokenized assets.

Coinbase said last month it would launch a tokenized stock service for overseas users that offers one-to-one ownership of shares. Unlike Robinhood, the service is designed to provide actual equity ownership, including dividends and shareholder rights.

Stablecoins are another major battleground, and Coinbase holds a clear advantage. The company serves as a distribution partner for Circle, sharing in income generated from managing the issuer’s reserves. That helps explain why Coinbase generated more than $300 million in stablecoin-related revenue in the first quarter.

Robinhood is backing USDG in the stablecoin race. USDG is a stablecoin issued by Paxos in Singapore. By market capitalization, USDG stands at about $3.2 billion, far below Circle’s roughly $70 billion. The industry expects USDG to gain market share quickly if Robinhood Chain maintains its growth momentum.