Author: Ada, Shenchao TechFlow

Robinhood is experiencing a strange schism.

After the US stock market closed on February 10, this retail trading platform handed over a seemingly impeccable report card: full-year revenue of US$4.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 52%, a record high. Diluted earnings per share were $2.05. Net deposits hit a record of $68 billion in 2025, including $16 billion in the fourth quarter. Robinhood Gold subscribers hit a record 4.2 million.

CEO Vlad Tenev was enthusiastic during the earnings call: "We are building a financial super application."

But the stock price fell 7% after hours. Combined with the year-to-date decline, Robinhood shares have halved from their October highs. A company that had just posted its best performance in history had lost half its value in four months.

What's the problem?

Looking carefully at the financial report, cryptocurrency trading revenue: $221 million, a 38% year-on-year plunge.

That number was $357 million in the same period last year and $268 million in the previous quarter. By Q4, Robinhood App’s crypto trading volume was only $34 billion, halving year-on-year.

Retail investors stopped trading. Bitcoin dropped from 126,000 to 65,000, the FOMO disappeared and was replaced by fear. When you open the app, you will see green and red. Closing the app is the most rational choice.

This is Robinhood's dilemma: Its core business is getting better, but the market is only focused on the part that's getting worse.

Of the 4.5 billion revenue, how much does crypto contribute?

Unpack Robinhood’s revenue structure, and you’ll find an identity transformation taking place.

Q4 trading commission income was US$776 million, a year-on-year increase of 15%. Among them, option trading contributed 314 million, an increase of 41%; stock trading contributed 94 million, an increase of 54%; other trading income was 147 million, which tripled. The only thing holding back was crypto, which plummeted from 358 million to 221 million.

Net interest income was $411 million, up 39%, driven by growth in interest-earning assets and securities lending activity. Gold membership subscription revenue was $50 million, up 56%.

Looking at the whole year, the proportion of crypto trading revenue in total revenue has dropped from about 35% in Q4 2024 to 17% in Q4 2025.

Robinhood knows this trend.

In the past year, it has been expanding its categories wildly: the prediction market did 12 billion contract transactions in the first year of its launch, and the transaction volume more than doubled in the fourth quarter alone; futures trading covers stock indices, energy, metals, and encryption; the number of Gold Card cardholders is sprinting to 1 million.

As early as the third quarter results meeting in 2025, the company's management stated: "We now have 11 business lines with annualized revenue exceeding US$100 million."

Meaning, don’t just look at encryption. But Wall Street is fixated on crypto.

A brokerage has become the shadow of Bitcoin

This is reminiscent of Strategy’s financial report released five days ago.

Strategy’s single-quarter net loss was US$12.4 billion, almost all of which came from the unrealized impairment of Bitcoin’s Q4 price drop. Saylor doesn’t care, saying Bitcoin’s decline is a gift and every pullback is a buying opportunity.

Robinhood is the exact opposite. It does not hold Bitcoin, does not bear price risks, and does not rely on debt issuance to buy coins to survive. It is just a trading platform and earns handling fees.

But when Bitcoin falls and retail investors stop trading, the handling fees will disappear.

Strategy lives on the price of Bitcoin. Robinhood lives off Bitcoin volatility. The two companies look completely different, but rely on the same thing underneath: retail investor sentiment toward cryptocurrencies.

Strategy bets on price direction, and Robinhood bets on casino traffic. In other words, when Bitcoin falls, casinos become deserted. Both modes lose.

The data confirms this judgment. Strategy’s MSTR is down 76% and is 1.6x leveraged against Bitcoin. Robinhood shares are down about 50% from their October highs, while Bitcoin has fallen 48% over the same period. The two curves almost overlap.

One is a leveraged long position on Bitcoin, and the other is an at-the-money call option on Bitcoin. The subject matter is the same: the temperature of the crypto market.

The trap of "record setting"

In Robinhood’s financial report, the word “record” appears many times. Record annual revenue, record Adjusted EBITDA, record net deposits, record Gold members, record EPS.

These numbers are real.

Strategy’s financial report also says “record breaking.” Record Bitcoin holdings. Record cash reserves. Record BTC Yield. But its shares fell 76%.

"Record" is a medal in a bull market and an epitaph in a bear market. It can only tell you where you were at your highest point, not what will happen next.

Robinhood’s Q4 revealed a key metric: monthly active users (MAUs) fell to 13 million from 14.9 million in the same period last year, a decrease of 1.9 million.

The user is leaving.

The company's platform custody assets increased by 68% year-on-year, which was due to the expansion of market value brought about by rising stock prices and currency prices. Annualized growth in net deposits has slowed from 30%+ at the beginning of the year to 19% in Q4. This means money is flowing in at a slower pace. The number of people is decreasing.

This is structurally the same problem that Strategy faces. In a bull market, all indicators are self-reinforcing: prices rise, trading is active, revenue rises, users rise, and stock prices rise. In a bear market, every link reverses.

The flywheel can rotate in the opposite direction. Robinhood also has its own flywheel.

Decryption: A big gamble

Robinhood obviously knows this. Robinhood's strategy over the past 12 months can be summed up in one sentence: reduce its reliance on cryptocurrencies while doubling down on its infrastructure.

It sounds contradictory, but the logic is very clear.

On the income side, strive to diversify. Prediction markets, futures, short selling, Gold Card, banking, retirement accounts, international expansion, and more.

On the infrastructure side, work hard to deepen it. Last year’s acquisition of Bitstamp, the world’s oldest crypto exchange, has seen trading volumes double. Launch of 2000 tokenized shares in Europe. Signed an acquisition agreement for a securities firm and encryption platform in Indonesia.

Robinhood learned from Coinbase’s 2022 lessons.

Coinbase almost died in the last bear market because its revenue structure was too single. Armstrong spent two years rebuilding. Tenev tries to diversify well before the bear market hits.

But time is not on his side. Robinhood's adjusted operating expenses and equity-based compensation budget for 2026 is $2.6 billion to $2.725 billion, a year-over-year increase of about 18%. This money will be spent on international expansion, new product research and development, acquisitions and integration. If the crypto winter continues and traditional brokerage business does not grow fast enough, cost expansion and revenue slowdown will result in profit margins being squeezed.

There are approximately US$4.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents on the books, enough to burn for a long time. But like Strategy, “living” and “growing” are two different things.

Encrypted thermometer in cold winter

Looking at the financial reports of Strategy and Robinhood together, you will see two ways of falling in the Bitcoin bear market.

Strategy is a chronic disease. Bitcoin is not rising and the flywheel has stopped spinning, but the 2.25 billion in cash on hand can last for two and a half years. It has time, but time consumes faith.

Robinhood is an acute response. Crypto revenue plummeted 38% in a quarter and it lost 1.9 million monthly active users, but other businesses are growing. It won't die, but it will hurt.

What both companies have in common is that neither has control over the most critical variable in their destiny.

Strategy has no control over the price of Bitcoin. Robinhood cannot control the emotions of retail investors. In the final analysis, the sentiment of retail investors is determined by the price of Bitcoin.

Everyone in this industry is pretending that they have Alpha, but in fact everyone only has Beta. Beta is Bitcoin. When Bitcoin rises, everyone is a genius. Bitcoin is falling and everyone is swimming naked.

Robinhood did set records in 2025, but no amount of records seems to be able to hide the pain of the crypto business decline.

What Tenev is facing now is a question with no standard answer.

Robinhood now is like a casino owner who just started quitting gambling. He knows what the problem is and he is taking action, but the dividends he once received in the bull market have turned into debt in the bear market.

For Robinhood, the real test is not its record in a bull market, but its floor in a bear market.

No one knows where the floor is yet.