Robinhood’s Chain Debut Sets Up Direct Challenge to Coinbase in US Crypto Market

Coinbase and Robinhood are emerging as fierce rivals in the U.S. digital-asset market.

Both support cryptocurrency trading, but they came from different starting points. Coinbase grew into a leading exchange focused on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether. Robinhood, by contrast, built its business around traditional financial products including stocks, exchange-traded funds and options.

That distinction has blurred this year as traditional finance and crypto increasingly converge. The two companies are now competing head-on in the same market.

Their recent moves underscore that shift. Coinbase said earlier this year that it wants to build an “everything exchange.” Robinhood, meanwhile, launched its own blockchain, Robinhood Chain, earlier in July, signaling a broader push into crypto.

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

Earnings and shares diverge

Ahead of that deeper rivalry, first-quarter results suggest Robinhood outperformed Coinbase. Robinhood said in April that first-quarter net revenue rose about 15% from a year earlier to $1.067 billion. Net income increased about 3% to $346 million.

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

The contrasting results came as the crypto market remained weak in the first quarter. Robinhood, which offers a broader mix of financial products including stocks, was able to offset weaker crypto revenue. Coinbase, whose core business is crypto trading, was less insulated from the downturn.

That gap has also shown up in the stocks. Robinhood shares closed at $115.54 on July 15, up 1.84% on the day, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock is up just 0.3% from the start of the year.

Compared with its lowest closing price of the year, $65.16 in late March, however, the shares have rallied more than 77%. In effect, Robinhood has recouped most of its losses from the slide through March in roughly three months.

Coinbase shares, meanwhile, finished at $167.21, up 3.54% on the day. But they remain more than 29% below the $236.53 level recorded at the start of the year. Compared with their late-March low close of $160.79, the shares are up only about 4%.

Can Robinhood Chain shake Base?

The next phase of competition is set to play out on the blockchain. Robinhood’s launch of its own chain is being viewed as a direct challenge to Base, Coinbase’s blockchain network. Lee said both Base and Robinhood Chain are designed to keep users inside each company’s ecosystem. He added that competition to attract users through those chains is likely to intensify.

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

The early response has been strong. Robinhood Chain logged about $3.1 billion in decentralized-exchange trading volume in the first week after its mainnet launch, according to Bernstein. That was enough to place it among the top five major blockchains by that measure.

One of the clearest symbols of that early momentum is CASHCAT, the first memecoin on the chain. Its market capitalization topped $200 million about 10 days after issuance. The token has since given back much of those gains and was trading at $0.1, but that price still represents a jump of about 12,000% from its launch level.

Base still has the edge 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 contrast, had 62 listed protocols and about $190.6 million in total value locked. By TVL, Base is roughly 24 times the size of Robinhood Chain.

Still, Robinhood Chain is catching up quickly in terms of activity. Its decentralized-exchange trading volume over the past 24 hours was about $797.5 million. Base recorded about $879.9 million, leaving a gap of only about $100 million. Given how recently Robinhood Chain launched, that narrow difference has fueled views that it is closing in fast.

New businesses become another battleground

Competition is also heating up in new business lines. At the center is real-world assets, or RWA, one of this year’s most closely watched areas in crypto. RWA refers to the tokenization of assets such as stocks and commodities on blockchain networks.

Robinhood already launched more than 200 U.S. stock and ETF tokens in Europe in June 2025. It also drew attention at the time by offering tokenized shares tied to SpaceX, which was still a private company.

Robinhood’s tokenized stocks, however, do not grant rights in the underlying shares. That means holders cannot exercise voting rights in the companies.

Coinbase is moving to catch up. Base rolled out its B20 token standard on mainnet on July 8. B20 is designed to make it easier to issue a range of assets including stablecoins and tokenized stocks. The move is seen as part of Coinbase’s broader plan to develop Base into infrastructure for issuing tokenized assets.

Coinbase also said in June that it would launch a tokenized stock service for overseas users that allows one-to-one ownership of shares. Unlike Robinhood’s product, the service is designed to provide actual equity ownership, including dividend payments and shareholder rights.

Stablecoins are another key area of competition. Coinbase holds a clear lead there. In particular, the company serves as a distribution partner for Circle, a structure under which Coinbase shares in returns generated from Circle’s reserve management. That is why Coinbase was able to generate more than $300 million in stablecoin-related revenue in the first quarter.

Robinhood is backing USDG in the stablecoin market. USDG is a stablecoin issued by Paxos in Singapore. Its market capitalization is about $3.2 billion, well below Circle’s roughly $70 billion. Industry participants say USDG could gain market share quickly if Robinhood Chain sustains its growth.