Author: Artemis Analytics

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: Robinhood Chain rose to the third place in DEX trading volume just one month after its launch, but its wallet is stuffed with animal coins and air coins. An old investor who started investing in Robinhood back in 2019 is anxious: don't repeat the foolishness of the meme stock frenzy in 2021, tokenized stocks are the right path that will help you exceed 10 billion dollars in revenue by 2030 and serve one hundred million users globally.

Dear Vlad and Johann:

Robinhood Chain launched less than a month ago and has made fast progress in "allowing everyone to participate in finance":

• Daily active addresses exceed 300,000
• Spot DEX daily trading volume exceeds 1 billion dollars (third on the chain)
• Stablecoin supply exceeds 300 million dollars
• Annualized on-chain daily fees exceed 40 million dollars
• TVL exceeds 300 million dollars, contributed by protocols like Morpho, Ethena, Uniswap, etc.

I invested in Robinhood's pre-IPO round when I was at Whale Rock hedge fund in 2019, and I also covered the IPO roadshow of Coinbase in 2020. The purpose of founding Artemis was to shift people's attention to assets in the crypto and stock markets that truly have lasting value, rather than speculating on Memecoin.

Last week when I opened my Robinhood wallet, I was both shocked and sad—there was basically nothing to trade but Memecoin, and after buying a little $CASCHAT for only three days, I was airdropped a bunch of meaningless tokens, one of which was even called "Pointless Coin."

That's right, Robinhood is now the third in spot DEX trading volume.

But the bulk of DEX trading volume is still Memecoin (animal coins, Vlad and Robinhood themed coins, or other various Memes). So please, Robinhood, do not build a Memecoin chain.

Robinhood Crypto can learn a lot from Coinbase's Base chain—Base is still a much larger chain today.

Brian Armstrong even emphasized in his reply to guide people towards truly lasting use cases.

I understand where the temptation lies—Memecoin is indeed a great way to attract early users, able to attract partners that bring liquidity and trading volume (people come for the Meme and stay for the real applications). Large independent projects like Aerodrome can thrive on Base, dominate trading volume, and establish a real business model.

But Memecoin will cause people to lose money, and destroy trust.

Just look at those Memecoins issued on Base at the beginning of 2024—they have dropped another 90% this year, having fallen 99% from their peak at the beginning of 2024.

Memecoin does not last and will hurt customers, further driving retail investors away from blockchain.

Moreover, the Memecoin on Robinhood Chain will deepen the stereotype on Wall Street and hedge funds—thinking that Robinhood is that trading app deeply entangled in the GME/Meme stock frenzy in early 2021.

Such tweets do not help at all:

Wall Street already struggles to understand Robinhood. Don’t continue to double down on harming the brand like in 2021.

Instead, liquidity and attention should focus on the Robinhood wallet and ecosystem, concentrating on Arcus (the former dydx team, leading early perpetual DEX) and tokenized stocks. I greatly appreciate how Arcus today allows anyone in the world to trade spot tokenized stocks.

These stocks have only gone up and never down in the past decade.

Please truly prioritize RWA as the focus of the Robinhood chain, allowing more investors to trade stocks and companies before IPO, expanding financial accessibility. Teams like RWA.xyz and Artemis are eager to help highlight these use cases.

Robinhood's biggest bearish logic is that it has saturated the US market—27 million funded accounts, Wall Street forecasts that it will only reach 31 to 32 million by fiscal 2028, which is not explosive growth enough.

My bullish logic for Robinhood is: by reaching over 100 million international investors through Robinhood Chain, they can now invest in RWA, prediction markets, stablecoins, listed companies, and pre-IPO stocks, as an early funnel at the top of the Robinhood App.

24/7/365 tokenized stock trading has real demand—just look at Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid, where people primarily trade real companies like SK Hynix with annual revenue of 68 billion dollars.

If through Robinhood Chain, Robinhood grows to 100 million monthly active users by 2030, with a current ARPU of 171 dollars, assuming that the ARPU of international users is lower (since they pay on-chain fees instead of trading through the Robinhood App, which has higher rates), considering ARPU at 100 dollars, consumer revenue alone could reach 10 billion dollars by 2030, surpassing Wall Street's predicted 8.78 billion dollars for the fiscal year 2029.

Vlad and Johann, you have the opportunity to achieve the promise of cryptocurrency through asset tokenization—allowing anyone to participate in finance.

Please don't ruin it by turning Robinhood into a Memecoin chain.

Wall Street, your clients, and the whole world will thank you.

Robinhood users from 2017 to present