The tech and finance chattering classes have crowned Robinhood the main character recently — and for good reason. Revenue in the last quarter surpassed $1 billion, the SEC entirely dropped its investigation into the company amid new regulatory clarity, and co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev even graced the pages of The Washington Post in January with an op-ed about blockchain technology.

The enthusiasm isn’t just hype. Put simply, there isn’t another player in consumer finance that has been able to match both Robinhood’s shipping speed and distribution. But it wasn’t always that way. Historically, Robinhood has been an underdog — its stock was basically flat from 2022 to 2024 — but the company has leveraged its recent success to build up a huge competitive advantage in creating new standards in consumer finance.

Robinhood’s stock jumped around 15 percent after its most recent earnings call in mid-February, when Vlad revealed impressive growth and aggressive new plans, particularly regarding crypto. In the last quarter, Robinhood’s total revenue doubled (to $1 billion in the quarter, $3 billion in the full year), its crypto revenue increased 700 percent to $358 million, and it held over $50 billion in net deposits in 2024. For Robinhood, three core priorities drive its decisions: being #1 in active traders, #1 in wallet share, and ultimately, #1 in the global financial ecosystem.

Robinhood’s product velocity has only been accelerating. The company recently launched both Gold Card (its credit card) and Legend (a desktop platform for active traders), in addition to an entirely new derivatives business. Subscribers to Robinhood Gold — Robinhood’s premium plan priced at $5 per month — are about to hit 3 million, driving this revenue stream to above $170 million annually. The company also rolled out prediction markets, which Tenev explicitly called “the future.” These aggressive new product lines have helped Robinhood’s market share grow 30 percent year-over-year for both equities and options, while net deposits also grew 50 percent on the year. Retirement accounts are also an important part of Robinhood’s product offerings, since they’re arguably the stickiest part of the consumer finance stack (because those users stay with the platform for decades).

On the earnings call, Vlad mentioned Robinhood’s growth strategies will only get more aggressive amid expected regulatory clarity from the new administration. One of his most ambitious goals is tokenizing private company shares in order to democratize access to private markets. This way, Vlad said, everyday investors — not just a tiny group of insiders — can invest in private companies like OpenAI (valued at $157 billion) and SpaceX ($350 billion). It’s still unclear exactly what this would look like in practice, but high-level, Vlad is advocating to “swiftly modernize securities laws and make tokenization of real-world assets possible.” This new dynamic would, of course, be good for Americans, but it would also be good for Robinhood’s business.

Crypto has also been a driver of Robinhood’s newfound growth. In January alone, Robinhood increased its tradeable crypto assets (on its main app) from 15 to 22, signaling a much more rapid pace with listings. Robinhood’s crypto trading fees are also roughly half of Coinbase’s, which helps it compete — although the selection is relatively limited on its non-Wallet app (22 crypto assets listed versus Coinbase’s 300+). Additionally, Robinhood is working on USDG — a global stablecoin it’s launching with other leading fintechs — which it plans to leverage to pass yield back to consumers (cue Vlad: “We think this is the future”).

Vlad also noted that Robinhood is exploring staking of cryptoassets as regulatory guidance and clarity improves. Coinbase currently does this and takes 25 to 35 percent fees on the staking rewards generated — again, good for the customer and also good for business.

Robinhood has been using crypto not just for its consumer offerings, but for the backend infrastructure benefits as well. For example, it’s using stablecoins to power many of its weekend settlements because they settle instantly and are available 24/7. In this way, when users buy stock on the platform, the funds can be converted to stablecoins basically instantly (via reserves held by the broker) and then transferred to the seller.

Robinhood has also developed an exchange routing mechanism for crypto traders to interact directly with the orderbook such that they can see exact pricing via routing; this caters to more professional or frequent traders, who are generally super sensitive to the spread eating into their profits. In Vlad’s words: “We want our active traders to feel as if they’d be at a disadvantage using any other platform.” In line with this, Robinhood is also expanding its more sophisticated financial offerings, having recently announced a roll out of BTC futures trading. And though not explicitly stated, we might even see Robinhood explore launching an Ethereum-based layer 2, following in Coinbase’s footsteps with Base.

Robinhood hasn’t been without its share of challenges, however — and its competition is intense. Charles Schwab alone has over fifty times the client assets that Robinhood does (over $10 trillion versus Robinhood’s $200 billion). Legacy financial incumbents have built up more trust by nature of just being older, while Robinhood is still “growing up” (it’s only 10 years old). And during the course of its relatively short lifespan, it’s already faced a $70 million FINRA fine for system outages during a period of market volatility, a $45 million SEC fine, and criticism for actions like blocking users from buying GameStop during its insane market rally.

And on the crypto side, Coinbase is a fierce competitor: it offers over ten times the assets Robinhood does, and also offers its customers staking rewards and advanced trading features that Robinhood has yet to implement. Though both players have wallet products, Coinbase Wallet has much greater market share — partly because it has its own layer 2, Base, live in production. This way, Coinbase can funnel users on its centralized platform onchain by onboarding them directly to Coinbase Wallet and Base within a familiar interface.

Additionally, it’s still unclear if using Robinhood is truly a net positive for users. One study found that increases in the number of Robinhood users are often accompanied by large price spikes in asset prices, followed by reliably negative returns — in other words, the market manifestation of hype-chasing. Further, “the layout of the [Robinhood] app, which draws attention to the most active stocks, also causes traders to buy stocks more aggressively than other retail investors.” Sophisticated short sellers then capitalize on these trading patterns, and the cycle continues. Sadly, the outcome for these retail investors is rarely actual financial freedom, but rather addictive hopes of making life-changing money.

All in all, though, Robinhood is so impressive because it’s been able to successfully cater to many different types of users with varying financial risk profiles. By rolling out product lines for all types of users, Robinhood is well-positioned to become the default interface for the financial system and capture the entire consumer finance market: savers, day traders, crypto enthusiasts, and more. Ultimately, it’s a platform for everyone.

— Bridget Harris