Những ai vẫn còn nặng lòng với altcoin, cứ mua HOOD là xong

Original: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Recently, Robinhood (HOOD) stock has performed quite strongly, even briefly returning above $100 last night. Unfortunately, it couldn't hold that level at the close, but I personally remain optimistic about HOOD's future performance.

During this downtrend cycle, HOOD is one of the few positions I have been consistently building (including swapping assets), so I've wanted to write an article about HOOD for a long time. In a previous Odaily Chatroom, I briefly shared my accumulation logic. Today, with the stock price performing well, I want to elaborate further. Please note, this is not investment advice, nor does it represent the platform's views. It's just some personal thoughts behind my accumulation of HOOD.

Analysis of Multi-Dimensional Positive Catalysts

Regarding the recent rise in HOOD, you can find many positive explanations from different dimensions.

Let's start with the fundamentals. Last week, Robinhood announced its May operating data. Details are as follows.

• Total Assets: $377 billion, a new all-time high;
• Funded Customers: 27.7 million, a new all-time high;
• Margin Book: $19.5 billion, a new all-time high;
• Event Contracts Volume: 3.9 billion contracts, a new all-time high;
• Cash & Deposits: $18.6 billion, a new all-time high;
• Options ADV: 11.6 million contracts, matching the all-time record;
• Equity Volume: $315 billion, the second-highest ever;
• Options Contracts Volume: 231 million contracts, the second-highest ever;
• The only underperforming metric was Crypto Volume: $12.2 billion, ranking only 16th in historical monthly data…

Some positive factors on the news front might better stir investor sentiment.

• First is the fastest-growing prediction market: Robinhood has started using its own prediction market, Rothera, to capture flow from Kalshi. Future related revenue is expected no longer to be shared with Kalshi. For details, see our yesterday's article: "The First Prediction Market Concept Stock Has Appeared!"
• Second is the IPO front. SpaceX's historic IPO brought record-level traffic to Robinhood. More importantly, Robinhood's brokerage and clearing business unit, Robinhood Securities, was approved last week to act as an IPO underwriter. This means Robinhood is likely to play a more central role in future IPO events (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI).
• Third, Robinhood was selected by the U.S. Treasury to act as the broker and initial trustee for the "Trump Account." The "Trump Account" is a tax-deferred investment account plan authorized by President Trump on June 9, 2025, under the "Big and Beautiful" Act. It aims to establish government-funded savings accounts for children of U.S. citizens born between January 1, 2025, and January 1, 2029. This means tens of millions of new U.S. babies in the coming years will default to using Robinhood as their brokerage platform. See details in "Robinhood Gains a Batch of New Investors, the Oldest is 1, the Youngest is -3".

Regarding market dynamics, there are some more direct signals.

• Robinhood director Meyer Malka has been continuously increasing his HOOD holdings recently. Over the past week or two, Malka has accumulated over $50 million worth of HOOD.
• Institutional investors are also giving HOOD more positive price expectations. Goldman Sachs maintains a "Buy" rating and has raised its price target from $105 to $108; Mizuho's price target is $115; Piper Sandler is the most optimistic, with a price target of $135.

For me personally, the initial reason for accumulating HOOD was optimism about its Q2 earnings report. First, I anticipated a massive boom in stock trading-related revenue this quarter due to the epic rally in U.S. stocks. Second, I expected a surge in prediction market trading volume driven by the World Cup, along with Rothera's revenue capture effect.

However, the reason I later switched a larger portion of my portfolio (mainly some leftover crypto assets) into HOOD stems from a different logic, which is the real focus of this article.

An Alternative to Altcoins

In early May, a friend asked me what I had bought recently. I mentioned HOOD, but at that time, HOOD had just declined from above $90 due to disappointing Q1 earnings (mainly a surprise $100 million expense related to the "Trump Account"), and its short-term trend looked quite poor.

My friend asked why. I briefly explained the reasons above. He thought for a moment and said, "Too bad my positions are all tied up; I don't have much ammunition left." I asked him what he was holding. Unsurprisingly, it was mostly altcoins.

I told him then, "Instead of clinging to altcoins, why not just switch to HOOD?"

The background for this judgment is that, over a relatively long period, cryptocurrency-related revenue has been a significant part of Robinhood's total revenue, and HOOD's stock price has shown a strong correlation with cryptocurrencies. However, recently, there has been evidence suggesting that Robinhood is breaking away from its dependence on the crypto business and positively decoupling from this correlation.

First, let's look at Robinhood's cryptocurrency-related revenue over the past five quarters. It's easy to see that the proportion of this revenue is generally declining, and in Q1, it fell to its lowest since 2025.

• 2025 Q1: Total revenue $927 million, crypto-related revenue $329 million, proportion 35%;
• 2025 Q2: Total revenue $989 million, crypto-related revenue $160 million, proportion 16%;
• 2025 Q3: Total revenue $1.274 billion, crypto-related revenue $268 million, proportion 21%;
• 2025 Q4: Total revenue $1.283 billion, crypto-related revenue $221 million, proportion 17%;
• 2026 Q1: Total revenue $1.067 billion, crypto-related revenue $134 million, proportion 13%.

Next, let's look at the direct comparison between HOOD and BTC price movements. Since the beginning of the year, HOOD has mostly maintained a similar trend to BTC, but a clear divergence has appeared recently.

Highlighting these two points mainly aims to show that the valuation logic surrounding HOOD is beginning to change. In the past, HOOD was often viewed as a "shadow stock" of the crypto market. Its business performance exhibited clear cyclicality with crypto bull and bear markets: when the crypto market soared, retail investors flocked to Robinhood to trade altcoins frenziedly, fee revenue surged, and the stock price took off; when the market was sluggish, retail investors left, and Robinhood's revenue quickly declined.

But now, Robinhood is no longer as heavily reliant on the crypto business. Even if the crypto market continues in its current lackluster state, its stock trading, prediction market, pre-IPO, and newly added underwriting businesses are still expected to support its performance growth.

This doesn't mean the crypto market will no longer affect HOOD. On the contrary, if the crypto market returns to a bull market, Robinhood's crypto trading revenue will likely explode simultaneously, and HOOD will still benefit from the industry's growth dividends.

Put more bluntly, the crypto circle can still influence HOOD, but HOOD no longer depends on it. If the crypto bull market returns, HOOD will rise along with it; if the crypto circle remains lifeless, HOOD won't mind either.

For everyone who still holds expectations for altcoins but is increasingly worried about liquidity drying up, narrative failure, and value capture issues, rather than continuing to place hopes on some token that may not see its next narrative cycle anytime soon, HOOD at this moment could be a safer bet.