Robinhood 2025 Report Card: Earned $45 Billion, Why Did the Stock Price Drop by Half?

Original Article Title: "Robinhood Achieves Best-Ever Performance, But Stock Price Plunges by Nearly Half"

Original Article Author: Ada, DeepChain TechFlow

Robinhood is going through a peculiar split.

After the U.S. stock market closed on February 10, this retail trading platform handed in a seemingly impeccable report card: annual revenue of $4.5 billion, a 52% year-on-year increase, reaching a new high. Diluted earnings per share were $2.05. Net deposits in 2025 hit a record $68 billion, with $16 billion in the fourth quarter. Robinhood Gold subscription users reached a record 4.2 million.

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

However, the stock price dropped by 7% after hours. Adding to the year-to-date decline, Robinhood's stock price has been halved from its peak in October last year. A company that just delivered its best-ever performance has seen its market value evaporate by half in four months.

What went wrong?

Taking a closer look at the financial report, cryptocurrency trading revenue: $221 million, plummeted by 38% year-on-year.

In the same period last year, this figure was $357 million, and it was $268 million in the previous quarter. By Q4, cryptocurrency trading volume on the Robinhood App plummeted to only $34 billion, halved from the previous year.

Retail investors are not trading. Bitcoin dropped from $126,000 to $65,000, FOMO disappeared, replaced by fear. Opening the app, all that is seen is a sea of red after green, and the most rational choice is to close the app.

This is Robinhood's dilemma: its core business is improving, but the market is only focusing on the deteriorating part.

How Much Did Cryptocurrency Contribute to the $4.5 Billion Revenue?

When you dissect Robinhood's revenue structure, you will discover an ongoing identity transformation.

Q4 transaction-based revenue was $776 million, a 15% year-on-year growth. Options trading contributed $314 million, up 41%; stock trading $94 million, up 54%; other transaction revenue $147 million, tripled. The only underperformer was cryptocurrency, plummeting from $358 million to $221 million.

Net Interest Income was $4.11 billion, up 39%, mainly driven by growth in interest-earning assets and securities lending activities. Gold Membership Subscription Revenue was $500 million, up 56%.

Looking at the full year, the proportion of cryptocurrency trading revenue in total revenue has decreased from around 35% in Q4 2024 to 17% in Q4 2025.

Robinhood is well aware of this trend.

Over the past year, it has significantly expanded its product offerings: the options market saw 12 billion contracts traded in its first year, with trading volume more than doubling in just the fourth quarter; futures trading now covers stock indices, energy, metals, and cryptocurrency; the number of Gold Card holders is approaching 1 million.

As early as the earnings call in Q3 2025, the company's management stated: "We now have 11 business lines with annualized revenue exceeding $1 billion."

It means, don't just focus on cryptocurrency. But Wall Street just can't take its eyes off cryptocurrency.

A Brokerage, Living in the Shadow of Bitcoin

This brings to mind Strategy's earnings report released five days ago.

Strategy reported a net loss of $12.4 billion for the quarter, almost entirely due to unrealized impairments from Bitcoin's Q4 price decline. Saylor doesn't mind, saying a Bitcoin drop is a gift, with every pullback being a buying opportunity.

Robinhood's situation is quite the opposite. It doesn't hold Bitcoin, doesn't take on price risk, and doesn't rely on debt-financed coin purchases to survive. It's just a trading platform, making money from transaction fees.

But when Bitcoin drops and retail traders stop trading, the transaction fees disappear too.

Strategy survives on Bitcoin's price. Robinhood thrives on Bitcoin's volatility. The two companies may seem completely different, but they fundamentally rely on the same thing: retail traders' sentiment towards cryptocurrency.

Strategy is betting on price direction, while Robinhood is betting on the casino's foot traffic. In other words, if Bitcoin falls, the casino empties out. Both models lose.

Data confirms this assessment. Strategy's MSTR has fallen by 76%, showing 1.6x leverage to Bitcoin. Robinhood's stock price has dropped around 50% from its peak in October last year, similar to Bitcoin's 48% decline during the same period. The two trends almost overlap.

One is a leveraged long position on Bitcoin, and 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 Highs"

In Robinhood's financial report, the term "record high" appeared multiple times. Record-high annual revenue, record-high adjusted EBITDA, record-high net inflows, record-high Gold member count, record-high EPS.

These numbers are all real.

Strategy's report also mentions "record high." Record-high Bitcoin holdings, record-high cash reserves, record-high BTC Yield. But its stock price dropped by 76%.

"Record high" is a badge of honor in a bull market and a tombstone in a bear market. It can only describe your status at the peak, not what will happen next.

Robinhood's Q4 revealed a key metric: Monthly Active Users (MAU) decreased from 14.9 million in the same period last year to 13 million, a decrease of 1.9 million.

Users are leaving.

The company's platform assets under custody increased by 68% year-on-year, driven by the inflation of market value due to rising stock and coin prices. The annualized growth rate of net inflows has slowed from over 30% at the beginning of the year to 19% in Q4. This means the rate of money inflow is slowing down. People are dwindling.

This structural issue is the same as what Strategy is facing. In a bull market, all indicators reinforce each other: prices rise, trading is active, revenue increases, users grow, and the stock price rises. In a bear market, every link reverses.

The flywheel can spin in reverse. Robinhood has its own flywheel too.

De-cryptoization: A High-Stakes Gamble

Robinhood is clearly aware of this. Over the past 12 months, Robinhood's strategy can be summarized in one sentence: reduce reliance on cryptocurrency while doubling down on crypto infrastructure.

It sounds contradictory, but the logic is clear.

On the revenue side, diversify aggressively. Predictive markets, futures, shorting, Gold Card, banking, retirement accounts, international expansion, etc.

On the infrastructure side, deepen aggressively. Last year, they acquired the world's oldest crypto exchange platform Bitstamp, which has doubled its trading volume. Launched 2,000 tokenized stocks in Europe. Signed acquisition agreements with brokerage and crypto platforms in Indonesia.

Robinhood Learned from Coinbase's Lesson in 2022.

Coinbase almost died in the last bear market because of its overly simple revenue structure. Armstrong spent two years rebuilding. Tenev tried to diversify before the bear market arrived.

But time was not on his side. Robinhood's 2026 adjusted operating expenses and equity incentive budget range from $26 billion to $27.25 billion, representing a year-over-year increase of approximately 18%. This money is earmarked for international expansion, new product development, and acquisition integration. If the crypto winter persists and the growth of traditional brokerage businesses is not fast enough, cost expansion combined with revenue deceleration will squeeze profit margins.

With approximately $43 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand, they have enough to burn for a long time. But like Strategy, being able to survive and being able to grow are two different things.

A Thermometer in the Crypto Winter

Comparing Strategy and Robinhood's financial reports, you'll see two ways Bitcoin's bear market can play out.

Strategy is a chronic illness. Bitcoin remains stagnant, the flywheel stops, but with $22.5 billion in cash, it can last for two and a half years. It has time, but time is eroding faith.

Robinhood is an acute reaction. Crypto revenue plummeted 38% in a quarter, monthly active users dropped by 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 both cannot control the most critical variable in their fate.

Strategy cannot control Bitcoin's price. Robinhood cannot control retail investors' emotions. And ultimately, retail investors' emotions are still dictated by Bitcoin's price.

Everyone in this industry pretends to have Alpha when in reality, everyone only has Beta. Beta is Bitcoin. When Bitcoin rises, everyone is a genius. When Bitcoin falls, everyone is caught swimming naked.

While Robinhood did set records in 2025, it seems that no matter how many records are broken, they can't mask the pains of the declining crypto business.

Tenev is now facing a question without a standard answer.

The current Robinhood is like a casino owner who has just started to quit gambling. He knows where the problem lies, he is taking action, but the dividends that were once earned in a bull market have turned into debts in a bear market.

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

Where the floor is, no one knows yet.

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