Robinhood’s Chain Push Sets Up Direct Clash With Coinbase in US Crypto

Coinbase and Robinhood are emerging as fierce rivals in the US digital-asset industry.

Both companies support cryptocurrency trading, but they came from different starting points. Coinbase built its business as an exchange focused on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether. Robinhood, by contrast, expanded through trading in traditional financial products including stocks, exchange-traded funds and options.

That divide has narrowed this year as traditional finance and crypto increasingly converge, bringing the two companies into direct competition.

Their latest moves highlight that shift. Coinbase said earlier this year it aims to build an “everything exchange.” Robinhood, meanwhile, launched its own blockchain, Robinhood Chain, earlier in July, underscoring its intention to expand deeper 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 and ETFs as well as real-world asset distribution. That has effectively placed the company in the same market as Coinbase.

Earnings and shares diverge

First-quarter results released ahead of a broader competitive showdown suggest Robinhood outperformed Coinbase.

Robinhood reported first-quarter net revenue of $1.067 billion in April, up about 15% from a year earlier. Net income rose 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 decline took a heavy toll on earnings, with the company reporting a net loss of $394.1 million for the quarter.

The weaker crypto market in the first quarter helps explain the performance gap. Robinhood, which offers a broader mix of financial products including stocks, was able to offset a decline in crypto revenue. Coinbase, whose core business is crypto trading, was more exposed to the downturn.

The divergence was also reflected in the stocks. Yahoo Finance data showed Robinhood rose 1.84% to close at $115.54 on July 15, leaving the shares up just 0.3% for the year.

Even so, the stock has climbed more than 77% from its year-to-date closing low of $65.16 at the end of March, recouping most of the losses from the selloff that lasted through March in roughly three months.

Coinbase rose 3.54% to close at $167.21 on July 15. The stock remains more than 29% below its $236.53 level at the start of the year. It has gained only about 4% from its year-to-date closing low of $160.79 at the end of March.

Can Robinhood Chain shake Base?

The companies’ next major battleground is likely to be blockchain infrastructure.

Robinhood’s new chain has been viewed as a direct challenge to Base, Coinbase’s blockchain network. Lee said both Base and Robinhood Chain are designed to keep users within each company’s ecosystem. 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 link users of its existing app and wallet to the new chain and offer a range of decentralized-finance services within a single ecosystem.

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

One symbolic example of the chain’s early momentum is CASHCAT, its first memecoin. The token’s market capitalization topped $200 million in about 10 days after issuance. It has since given up much of those gains and now trades at $0.10, though that still marks a surge of about 12,000% from its launch price.

Base still leads by a wide margin in ecosystem depth. As of July 16, Base had 1,023 DeFi protocols listed on DefiLlama, with total value locked of about $4.585 billion.

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

Robinhood Chain is catching up quickly in activity, however. Its decentralized-exchange trading volume over the past 24 hours was about $797.5 million, compared with about $879.9 million for Base. The gap is only around $100 million, fueling views that Robinhood Chain is closing in fast given how recently it launched.

Competition is heating up in new businesses

The rivalry is also intensifying in newer business areas, especially real-world assets, or RWA, one of the most closely watched corners of crypto this year. The technology enables assets such as stocks and commodities to be tokenized 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 linked to SpaceX, which was then still privately held.

Robinhood’s tokenized stocks do not, however, grant rights to the underlying shares. Holders therefore cannot exercise voting rights in those 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 reflects a broader plan to build Base into infrastructure for issuing tokenized assets.

Coinbase said last month that it would launch a tokenized stock service for overseas users that offers one-to-one backing with actual shares. Unlike Robinhood’s product, it would provide real equity ownership, including dividend payments and shareholder rights.

Stablecoins are another key battleground, and Coinbase has a clear edge. The company serves as a distribution partner for Circle and shares in revenue generated from the management of Circle’s reserves. That structure helps explain why Coinbase generated more than $300 million in stablecoin-related revenue in the first quarter.

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