Written by: Ada, Deep Tide TechFlow
Original title: Robinhood Achieved Its Best Performance in History, But the Stock Price Fell by Nearly Half
Robinhood is experiencing a peculiar split.
After the U.S. stock market closed on February 10, this retail trading platform delivered a seemingly impeccable report card: full-year revenue of $4.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 52%, reaching a record high. Diluted earnings per share were $2.05. Net deposits for 2025 hit a record $68 billion, with $16 billion in the fourth quarter. The number of Robinhood Gold subscribers reached a record 4.2 million.
CEO Vlad Tenev was triumphant during the earnings call: "We are building a financial super app."
But the stock price fell 7% after hours. Combined with the decline this year, Robinhood's stock price has halved from its peak last October. A company that just achieved its best performance in history saw its market capitalization evaporate by half in four months.
What's the problem?
Looking closely at the earnings report, cryptocurrency trading revenue: $221 million, a sharp year-on-year drop of 38%.
This figure was $357 million in the same period last year and $268 million in the previous quarter. By Q4, the crypto trading volume on the Robinhood App had halved to $34 billion.
Retail traders have stopped trading. Bitcoin fell from $126,000 to $65,000, and FOMO (fear of missing out) has disappeared, replaced by fear. Opening the app reveals a sea of red instead of green, and closing the app has become the most rational choice.
This is Robinhood's dilemma: its core business is improving, but the market is only focused on the part that is deteriorating.
How Much Did Crypto Contribute to the $4.5 Billion Revenue?
Breaking down Robinhood's revenue structure reveals an ongoing identity shift.
Q4 trading commission revenue was $776 million, a year-on-year increase of 15%. Among this, options trading contributed $314 million, up 41%; stock trading contributed $94 million, up 54%; other trading revenue was $147 million, tripling. The only drag was crypto, which plummeted from $358 million to $221 million.
Net interest income was $411 million, up 39%, primarily driven by growth in interest-earning assets and securities lending activities. Gold membership subscription revenue was $50 million, up 56%.
For the full year, the proportion of crypto trading revenue in total revenue has dropped from around 35% in Q4 2024 to 17% in Q4 2025.
Robinhood is well aware of this trend.
Over the past year, it has aggressively expanded its product categories: the prediction market saw 12 billion contract trades in its first year, with trading volume more than doubling in the fourth quarter alone; futures trading now covers stock indices, energy, metals, and crypto; the number of Gold Card holders is approaching 1 million.
As early as the Q3 2025 earnings call, the management stated: "We now have 11 business lines with annualized revenue exceeding $100 million."
The message is: don't just focus on crypto. But Wall Street is fixated on crypto.
A Brokerage Living in Bitcoin's Shadow
This brings to mind Strategy's earnings report five days ago.
Strategy reported a net loss of $12.4 billion for the quarter, almost entirely due to unrealized impairments from Bitcoin's price drop in Q4. Saylor doesn't care; he says Bitcoin's decline is a gift, and every pullback is a buying opportunity.
Robinhood's situation is the opposite. It doesn't hold Bitcoin, doesn't bear price risk, and doesn't rely on issuing debt to buy coins to stay afloat. It is merely a trading platform that earns fees.
But when Bitcoin falls, retail traders stop trading, and the revenue from fees disappears.
Strategy relies on Bitcoin's price direction. Robinhood relies on Bitcoin's volatility. The two companies appear entirely different, but at their core, they depend on the same thing: retail sentiment toward cryptocurrencies.
Strategy bets on price direction; Robinhood bets on casino traffic. In other words, when Bitcoin falls, the casino empties out. Both models lose.
Data confirms this judgment. Strategy's MSTR fell 76%, acting as a 1.6x leveraged bet on Bitcoin. Robinhood's stock price fell about 50% from its peak last October, while Bitcoin fell 48% over the same period. The two curves almost overlap.
One is a leveraged long position on Bitcoin; the other is an at-the-money call option on Bitcoin. The underlying asset is the same: the temperature of the crypto market.
The Trap of "Record-Breaking"
The word "record-breaking" appears multiple times in Robinhood's earnings report. Record annual revenue, record adjusted EBITDA, record net deposited funds, record Gold membership numbers, record EPS.
These numbers are all true.
Strategy's earnings report also says "record-breaking." Record Bitcoin holdings. Record cash reserves. Record BTC Yield. But its stock price fell 76%.
"Record-breaking" is a medal in a bull market and an epitaph in a bear market. It only describes your state at the peak, not what happens next.
Robinhood's Q4 reveals a key metric: monthly active users (MAU) dropped from 14.9 million in the same period last year to 13 million, a decrease of 1.9 million.
Users are leaving.
The assets under custody on the platform increased by 68% year-on-year, but that's due to market capitalization膨胀 from rising stock and crypto prices. The annualized growth rate of net deposited funds has slowed from over 30% at the beginning of the year to 19% in Q4. This means the inflow of money is slowing down. People are decreasing.
This is structurally the same problem Strategy faces. In a bull market, all metrics reinforce each other: prices rise, trading is active, revenue increases, users grow, stock prices rise. In a bear market, every环节 reverses.
The flywheel can spin backward. Robinhood has its own flywheel.
De-Cryptoization: A High-Stakes Gamble
Robinhood clearly knows this. Over the past 12 months, Robinhood's strategy can be summarized in one sentence: reduce reliance on cryptocurrency while doubling down on cryptocurrency infrastructure.
It sounds contradictory, but the logic is clear.
On the revenue side, aggressively pursue diversification. Prediction markets, futures, short selling, Gold Card, banking services, retirement accounts, international expansion, etc.
On the infrastructure side, aggressively deepen. Last year, it acquired Bitstamp, the world's longest-running crypto exchange, and trading volume has already doubled. Launched 2,000 tokenized stocks in Europe. Signed acquisition agreements for brokerages and crypto platforms in Indonesia.
Robinhood learned from Coinbase's 2022 lesson.
Coinbase nearly died in the last bear market because its revenue structure was too单一. Armstrong spent two years rebuilding. Tenev is trying to achieve diversification before the bear market arrives.
But time is not on his side. Robinhood's adjusted operating expenses and equity incentive budget for 2026 is $2.6 billion to $2.725 billion, an increase of about 18% year-on-year. This money will be spent on international expansion, new product development, and acquisition integration. If the crypto winter persists and growth in the traditional brokerage business is not fast enough, cost expansion coupled with slowing revenue will squeeze profit margins.
With approximately $4.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand, it can burn for a long time. But like Strategy, "surviving" and "growing" are two different things.
The Thermometer in the Crypto Winter
Looking at Strategy's and Robinhood's earnings reports together, you see two ways Bitcoin's bear market plays out.
Strategy is a chronic illness. Bitcoin doesn't rise, the flywheel stops, but the $2.25 billion in cash can last two and a half years. It has time, but time consumes faith.
Robinhood is an acute reaction. Crypto revenue plummeted 38% in one quarter, MAU lost 1.9 million, but other businesses are still growing. It won't die, but it will hurt.
The commonality between the two companies is: they cannot control the most critical variable in their destiny.
Strategy cannot control Bitcoin's price. Robinhood cannot control retail sentiment. And retail sentiment, ultimately, is determined by Bitcoin's price.
Everyone in this industry pretends they have Alpha, but in reality, everyone only has Beta. Beta is Bitcoin. When Bitcoin rises, everyone is a genius. When Bitcoin falls, everyone is naked swimming.
Robinhood did set records in 2025, but no number of records seems to掩盖 the pain brought by the decline in the crypto business.
Tenev now faces a question with no standard answer.
Current Robinhood is like a casino owner who has started to quit gambling. He knows the problem, he is taking action, but the dividends gained in the bull market have all turned into debts in the bear market.
For Robinhood, the real test is not the records in the bull market, but the floor in the bear market.
Where is the floor? No one knows yet.
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