To Robinhood: Never build a meme-coin public chain

Author: Jon Ma, Co-founder and CEO of Artemis; Translated by: Shaw, Golden Finance

To Vlad and Johann:

With less than a month since launch, Robinhood Chain is off to a strong start in driving financial inclusion.

• Daily active addresses exceed 300k
• The spot decentralized exchange (DEX) daily trading volume surpasses $1 billion (ranked #3 among public chains)
• Stablecoin circulating supply reaches $300 million
• Robinhood Chain’s daily fees translate to an annualized return of $40 million
• Driven by projects including Morpho, Ethena, and Uniswap, total value locked (TVL) surpasses $300 million

Note: Vlad Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO; Johann Kerbrat, Head of Robinhood Crypto

In 2019, while working at Whale Rock (a long/short hedge fund), I participated in investing Robinhood’s Pre-IPO round; in 2020, I also followed Coinbase’s IPO roadshow. After that, I founded Artemis with the original goal of directing market capital toward real assets in the crypto and stock space that hold long-term value—not hype various meme coins.

Last week, when I opened my Robinhood wallet, I felt shocked and disappointed: the assets available to trade on the platform are almost only Meme coins. I bought a small amount of $CASCHAT for just three days and then started receiving a stream of random, valueless token air drops—some even had a token name literally called “Pointless Coin.”

That’s right: Robinhood Chain’s spot DEX trading volume is currently ranked third among all public chains.

But most of the current DEX trading volume still comes from Meme coins (various animal-themed Meme coins, Vlad- and Robinhood-related Meme coins, and other broadly categorized Meme coin types). Please, Robinhood, do not build a Meme coin public chain.

Compared with Robinhood, Base’s current ecosystem is much larger, and Robinhood Crypto has a lot of experience worth learning from Base.

Brian Armstrong reiterated the point again in his reply, arguing for guiding users to focus on application scenarios that have real value and can be sustainably implemented.

I understand the appeal: Meme coins can efficiently acquire early users and bring in partners that provide liquidity and trading volume (because when Meme coins enter, retention relies on real applications). Top independent projects like Aerodrome can still thrive—it monopolizes Base chain trading volume and has already run a truly workable business model.

But meme coins only lead investors to suffer losses and destroy market trust.

Take a look at the many meme coins issued on Base at the start of 2024—this year they fell another 90% (cumulative decline of up to 99% compared with their early-2024 peak).

Meme coins don’t have long-term staying power; they harm users’ interests and further deter ordinary retail investors, making them unwilling to use blockchain.

In addition, if Robinhood Chain is filled with large numbers of Meme coins, it will reinforce Wall Street and hedge funds’ longstanding impression: Robinhood is nothing more than a short-term trading platform that rose out of the 2021 early GameStop (GME) and meme stock frenzy.

Tweets like the one below will only make things worse:

Wall Street can already barely understand Robinhood. Please don’t double down on pushing business lines that will once again harm the brand image in 2021.

The focus should be shifted toward the liquidity and traffic core of the Robinhood wallet, as well as the Arcus within the ecosystem (built by the original dYdX team, a veteran top perpetual contract DEX), and the tokenized stocks track. I’m very optimistic about the functions Arcus is delivering right now: any users worldwide can trade spot tokenized stocks.

These stocks have only gone up over the past decade.

Robinhood Chain should actively push the real-world assets (RWA) track to broaden the coverage of financial services, allowing more investors to trade stocks and shares in Pre-IPO companies. Teams like RWA.xyz and Artemis are also willing to help promote these application scenarios.

The biggest downside logic for Robinhood lies in this: the U.S. domestic market is already close to saturation. Currently, there are 27 million funded accounts; Wall Street forecasts that in fiscal year 2028, the number of funded accounts will only reach 31 million–32 million, with growth lacking explosive momentum.

My bullish core logic on Robinhood is: leveraging Robinhood Chain, it could reach more than 100 million new overseas investors. They can invest in real-world assets (RWA), prediction markets, stablecoins, public companies, and Pre-IPO equity, while also building an upstream early-traffic gateway for the public Robinhood App.

There is real demand in the market for tokenized stocks traded year-round (7×24 hours). Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid is a typical example: users mainly trade stock-related underlying assets, such as SK Hynix. This company has $68 billion in real revenue, with solid operations and strong real-economy business—an excellent asset that investors want to allocate to.

Suppose that leveraging Robinhood Chain, Robinhood reaches 100 million monthly active users (MAU) by 2030. The company’s current average revenue per user (ARPU) is about $171; overseas user ARPU would be relatively lower—the reason is that they pay trading fees via the public chain rather than trading inside the Robinhood main app, which has a higher split rate. We assume overseas user ARPU is $100. By calculating only the C-end business, it can achieve $10 billion in revenue by 2030, surpassing Wall Street’s $8.78 billion expectation for fiscal year 2029.

Vlad, Johann, you have the opportunity to realize the ultimate vision of crypto technology by leveraging asset tokenization—opening up financial channels to everyone.

Never turn your Robinhood public chain into a meme-coin chain and ruin this opportunity.

Wall Street, your users, and the whole world will appreciate the right choice you make.

Sincerely,

Jon Ma

Using Robinhood since 2017.