Robinhood Chain launched with tokenized Apple and Nvidia shares as its marquee pitch, but two weeks into its debut the network’s biggest trading activity is coming from meme coins with names like Tendies, Wen Lambo, and Hoodrat.
Analysts at investment bank Bernstein flagged the dynamic in a note on Monday, writing that ‘early trading volumes on Robinhood Chain were led by meme coins, but [it] shows strong liquidity and traction from crypto-native traders.’ The bank simultaneously underscored Robinhood’s longer-term push into real-world assets.
$3.1 Billion in DEX Volume in One Week
The Ethereum layer-2 network has rapidly climbed into the top five destinations for on-chain trading, generating $3.1 billion in cumulative decentralized exchange volume over a seven-day period. That activity has flowed through DEXs including Uniswap and PancakeSwap.
The contrast with the network’s flagship product is stark. Roughly 65,000 users hold approximately $13 million in tokenized stock tokens, which are accessible in more than 120 countries but remain unavailable in the United States. The leading meme coin on the chain, Cash Cat, a token based on an image of a cat, carries a market cap of $150 million and was held by around 25,000 wallets as of Monday, according to blockchain explorer Blockscout.
Bernstein noted that Robinhood is working to expand on-chain activity beyond speculation. The brokerage has partnered with DeFi protocol Morpho to offer decentralized lending and with DEX Lighter to provide perpetual futures trading.
Robinhood Stock Recovers as Chain Gains Traction
Shares of Robinhood traded around $111 on Monday, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock has risen 19 percent over the past month, nearly erasing year-to-date losses that accompanied a broader crypto market pullback.
BitMine Chairman Tom Lee, who is an investor in Dastan, the parent company of Decrypt, argued on X over the weekend that Robinhood Chain’s early success has strengthened Ethereum’s status as money because the network’s transaction fees are denominated in ETH.
The meme coin dominance sits awkwardly alongside comments made nearly a year ago by Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, who described tokenization as ‘the biggest innovation in capital markets in over a decade’ on an earnings call, referencing the concept approximately a dozen times. He predicted at the time that criticisms of crypto assets as ‘mostly meme-based’ and lacking fundamental value would fade as tokenization technology matured and linked tokens to real assets. The chain’s first weeks suggest that prediction is still pending.
