Dissecting Robinhood’s Strong Growth and Global Strategy Behind Q2 2025 Earnings Report
On July 30, the highly anticipated Robinhood released its Q2 2025 earnings report, drawing widespread attention and discussion in the market.
This earnings report provides a key glimpse into how Robinhood is reshaping the brokerage role in the global embrace of the Web3 trend. As a platform transforming from traditional finance to the forefront of Web3, its growth momentum and strategic layout deserve in-depth exploration.
Financial Data Analysis
According to the official report (source: Robinhood Q2 2025 Earnings Report), Robinhood’s total revenue for the second quarter was $989 million, a year-on-year increase of 45%, with net profit reaching $386 million and a profit margin of 39%, significantly higher than the same period last year. These figures strongly reflect its robust progress in the market, showcasing its potential to gradually establish a foothold in the fiercely competitive brokerage business.
In terms of revenue composition, trading income (including options trading, stock trading, cryptocurrency trading, etc.) amounted to $539 million, a year-on-year increase of 65%. This growth was mainly driven by a simultaneous increase in cryptocurrency and stock trading volumes. Its proactive Web3 transformation strategy, particularly the promotion of its cryptocurrency business, serves as an important new engine for the growth of trading income.
Interest income was $302 million, benefiting from the expansion of cash management products, while subscription services (primarily Robinhood Gold) contributed $114 million, a year-on-year increase of 76%, with the number of users rising to 3.5 million. This indicates Robinhood’s success in building a high-retention revenue source.
Compared to Q2 2024 (total revenue of $682 million, net profit of $188 million), Robinhood’s revenue structure diversification trend has become increasingly apparent, significantly reducing the risk associated with a single revenue source.
Behind these figures, Robinhood has demonstrated its balance in user growth and cost management. The significant improvement in net profit indicates that the company has seized market opportunities while controlling operating expenses, especially under changing interest rate environments and user behavior, where the growth of interest and subscription income has also provided strong support for profit margin enhancement.
However, the diversification of revenue structure also brings new considerations: despite the exciting rapid growth of trading income, reliance on PFOF (Payment for Order Flow) may still face regulatory fluctuations; the expansion of subscription services must continue to enhance user experience to maintain growth momentum. These figures not only reflect current performance but also provide clear guidance for the company’s future strategic adjustments, laying an important foundation for subsequent Web3 transformation.
Cryptocurrency Business Revenue Growth of 98%
In the past second quarter, Robinhood’s most significant innovation was its efforts in the cryptocurrency sector. According to the earnings report, Q2 cryptocurrency trading income was $160 million, representing a remarkable growth of 98% compared to $80.8 million in the same period last year.
This outstanding growth in the cryptocurrency sector is closely tied to Robinhood’s two major moves this year related to the cryptocurrency field—acquiring Bitstamp and launching tokenized trading services for U.S. stocks.
On June 2, 2025, Robinhood announced the official completion of its acquisition of the global cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp for $200 million. This exchange, one of the longest-operating globally, not only brought Robinhood a mature network of cryptocurrency exchanges covering Europe, the UK, and Asia but also provided over 50 global regulatory licenses. More importantly, Bitstamp’s institutional client base filled a gap for Robinhood, which has long been branded as “a retail paradise,” solidifying its position in both retail and institutional markets and granting it the competitive edge to rival world-renowned exchanges like Binance and Coinbase.
The acquisition of Bitstamp provided significant support for Robinhood’s expansion in the cryptocurrency sector, and stock prices serve as the most direct reflection of market sentiment: after announcing the completion of the Bitstamp acquisition, Robinhood’s stock price surged 13% to $74.42 in pre-market trading on June 4.
In comparison to the data growth, the strategic significance of this acquisition may be even more important. The acquisition of Bitstamp marks Robinhood’s transition from a retail-oriented trading platform to a global retail + institutional fintech company, significantly enhancing its competitiveness in the cryptocurrency sector.
In addition to the strategic acquisition of Bitstamp, Robinhood has also made significant technological innovations—launching tokenized stock trading services aimed at the European market. On June 30, 2025, Robinhood officially announced the launch of its U.S. stock tokenization product during the “Robinhood Presents: To Catch a Token” event held in Cannes, France, and went live in the EU region on July 1.
Currently, Robinhood supports tokenized trading for over 200 popular U.S. stocks and ETFs, which not only includes popular stocks like Apple and Nvidia but also includes sought-after private companies like OpenAI and SpaceX. Although the founders of both companies have publicly questioned this, there is no doubt that Robinhood has achieved its goal—attracting the attention of investors worldwide interested in trading U.S. stocks.
Competitors
Robinhood’s impressive performance in Q2 has also led to comparisons between Robinhood and traditional brokerage Futu in the market.
As a traditional brokerage, Futu is finding itself increasingly facing this “young rival” that is growing stronger step by step. Some users on the X platform have also shared their comparative analyses of the two brokerages.
X user @bruce_aiweb3 tweeted a detailed comparison between the two from various aspects. From the product background, Robinhood was founded by Stanford high-frequency trading software developers rather than Wall Street, giving it a technology-first style from its inception, with a smooth user experience and “gamified” guidance, earning widespread acclaim among the young “retail” demographic.
In contrast, Futu has the unique “Tencent” background, continuing the large firm’s precise vision and product control capabilities: killer products and highly engaging community interactions. While this background brings many mature experiences and methodologies, it also introduces geopolitical risks.
From the revenue model perspective, Robinhood’s current revenue mainly relies on PFOF (Payment for Order Flow) and interest income, which, although cyclical, generates very high revenue within the cycle. In contrast, Futu’s revenue sources are more diversified; in addition to commissions and interest, Futu also has B2B enterprise services (IPO underwriting, IR, ESOP management) that bring in substantial profits while also increasing Futu’s resilience to market fluctuations.
From a data comparison perspective, Robinhood’s price-to-earnings ratio is approximately 63 times, far exceeding Futu’s 10.5 times. Additionally, Robinhood has a larger user base, with 25.9 million accounts, about ten times that of Futu, although Futu’s average user assets are higher.
Since Futu has not yet announced its Q2 earnings report, this article uses the Q1 earnings report of both companies for comparison, showing that Robinhood has a larger scale ( $927 million vs. $603 million) but a lower profit margin (36.2% vs. 45.6%). This also reflects that while Robinhood has a wider global coverage and rapid development, it lacks the stable profit capability that Futu has built over the long term.
The report comparing fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2023 also reflects this point: Robinhood’s revenue grew by 58.6%, achieving $1.41 billion in net profit and turning losses into profits. In contrast, Futu showed steady growth: revenue grew by 36.7%, net profit grew by 28.3%, reaching $699 million.
In future development, Robinhood is addressing the main threats of regulatory constraints while embracing the global wave of Web3 and is gradually stepping towards becoming a global brokerage giant. However, the geopolitical risks that Futu has long faced remain and may not have a good solution in the short term.
As another “light of retail investors” and a rising star in the Web3 field, Robinhood is also being compared with the emerging decentralized exchange Hyperliquid in the past two years.
In the data comparisons for May and June, Hyperliquid’s trading data consistently exceeded that of Robinhood.
However, some users also stated that Hyperliquid’s data is significantly amplified by perpetual contracts, making a fair comparison difficult.
Furthermore, many users still believe that Hyperliquid is severely undervalued. This also indirectly reflects the enormous demand for cryptocurrency trading and validates the correctness of Robinhood’s choice to transform its strategy towards Web3. Additionally, Robinhood possesses a more diverse business model and a broader global market, which provides a much deeper moat compared to Hyperliquid.
Whether against Futu or Hyperliquid, Robinhood has its own competitive barriers in comparison, currently situated in a multidimensional competitive landscape of stable profits, explosive growth, and technological innovation in the Web3 era. Robinhood has solidified its market position with its stable performance in Q2.
Entering the Second Half
Robinhood’s Q2 earnings report provides a clear answer to the market: the decision for traditional brokerages to embrace cryptocurrency is undoubtedly correct.
Amid the growing acceptance of Web3 worldwide, Robinhood has undoubtedly emerged as a leader in this wave, and in the second half of this year, Robinhood will launch multiple cryptocurrency-related initiatives, such as acquiring Canadian digital asset service provider WonderFi, launching cryptocurrency perpetual futures trading in Europe, and introducing more cryptocurrency product offerings for customers.
We look forward to seeing this “Robin Hood,” which emerged from a crowd of retail investors, continue to drive the integration of cryptocurrency and traditional finance in the second half of this year, delivering an even better performance report.
This article is a collaborative reprint from: Deep Tide