From Retail Investor Trading Platform to Financial Infrastructure Disruptor: A Deep Dive into Robinhood's Evolution and Future Strategy

On June 30, 2025, the stock price of a certain trading platform surged over 12% during the trading session, reaching a historical high. The market's frenzy stemmed from a series of major announcements made at its event in Cannes, France: the launch of tokenized stock products, the establishment of a Layer 2 blockchain based on Arbitrum, and the provision of perpetual contracts for EU users. This marks a fundamental shift in the market's perception of it - it is no longer just a "retail investor trading app" aimed at young people, but is attempting to become a potential "disruptor of financial infrastructure."

This article will analyze the evolution of its business model and the logic of its core strategy from the three dimensions of "yesterday, today, and tomorrow" on the platform, and deduce its future impact on the industry market.

1. Yesterday: The Barbaric Growth and Transformation Pains from "Zero Commission" to "Diversification"

1. The original intention of entrepreneurship and user positioning

The platform was initiated by two founders with backgrounds in physics and mathematics from Stanford University. Their experience in developing low-latency trading systems for hedge funds made them realize that technology serving institutions could also serve retail investors. Their original intention is "financial democratization," aiming to provide ordinary people with the same investment opportunities as institutions. This concept resonated precisely with the millennial generation's distrust of big banks after the 2008 financial crisis.

They seized the wave of mobile internet and launched an App designed specifically for mobile devices in 2014. Its two disruptive innovations are:

• Zero-commission trading: Completely breaks the charging model of traditional brokers, greatly lowering the investment threshold.
• Ultimate user experience: A clean and even "addictive" interface design gamifies complex financial transactions, attracting a large number of young people without investment experience.

2. Establishment and Controversies of Core Business Models

Behind "zero commission" is the platform's carefully constructed diversified revenue model, among which the most representative and controversial is PFOF (Payment for Order Flow).

PFOF (Payment for Order Flow)

PFOF is the cornerstone of the platform's "zero commission" model. In short, the platform does not send users' orders directly to exchanges but instead packages them and sells them to high-frequency trading market makers. Market makers earn small profits from the bid-ask spread and pay a portion to the platform as a return. This model has brought substantial revenue, but it has also sparked long-term regulatory controversies, with the core issue being whether it sacrifices the best execution price for users in favor of its own interests.

Business Diversification Exploration

Based on PFOF, the platform continuously expands its business territory and has built three major revenue pillars:

• Trading business: rapidly expanded from initial stock trading to options and cryptocurrencies.
• Interest income: By launching margin loans and cash management services, convert users' idle funds and leverage needs into stable interest income.
• Subscription Service: Launch value-added subscription services, offering instant deposits, pre-market and after-hours trading functionalities.

3. Growing Pains: Crisis and Reflection

The development of this platform has been filled with various crisis events:

• Technical and risk control crisis: The platform experienced a full-day outage, leading to a collective lawsuit by users. It also exposed the serious shortcomings in user education and risk warning behind its "gamified" interface.
• Trust crisis: During an event where retail investors fought against Wall Street, the platform suddenly restricted users from buying popular stocks, being accused of "pulling the plug" and betraying retail investors.
• Ongoing regulatory pressure: From the fines imposed by FINRA over PFOF issues to the SEC's investigation into its cryptocurrency business, regulation has always been the sword of Damocles hanging over the platform.

These crises have collectively exposed the platform's Achilles' heel: the instability of the technology platform, flaws in the risk control mechanisms, and the potential conflicts between the business model and user interests. It is these profound growing pains that force the platform to seek new growth narratives and strategic directions to break free from the label of "Meme stock paradise" and rebuild market trust.

2. Today: All in Crypto - The platform's strategic ambitions and business logic

1. Core of Strategic Shift: Why RWA and Tokenization of Stocks?

Financial Drive: The Core Engine of Profit

According to the financial report data, the cryptocurrency business has become the most profitable business for the platform. In the first quarter of 2025, cryptocurrency trading contributed $252 million in revenue, accounting for 43% of total trading revenue, surpassing options for the first time as the largest source of trading revenue. More importantly, its astonishing profit margin; according to analysis, the market-making rebate rate for cryptocurrency order flow is 45 times that of stocks and 4.5 times that of options. Driven by both growth and profitability, All in Crypto has become the inevitable choice.

Narrative Upgrade: From Brokerage to "Bridge"

This move helps the platform upgrade from a controversial "retail investor brokerage" to a "bridge connecting traditional finance (TradFi) with the on-chain world." This not only effectively removes the regulatory shadow of PFOF and the cyclical label of "Meme stocks," but also aims to tap into a trillion-dollar market that far exceeds the scale of existing business - the digitization and tokenization of vast assets in the real world.

Core Objective: Disrupt Traditional Financial Infrastructure

The platform clearly articulates its vision for RWA tokenization. They believe that utilizing blockchain technology can achieve:

• 24/7 All-Day Trading: Break the time barrier of traditional exchanges.
• Near-instant settlement: from T+2 to T+0, significantly reducing counterparty risk and operational costs.
• Unlimited ownership segmentation: Allows high-value assets (such as real estate and artworks) to be fragmented, reducing investment thresholds.
• Enhance liquidity: Create a broader market for traditionally illiquid assets (such as private equity).
• Automated Compliance: Embed regulatory rules through smart contracts to reduce compliance costs.

2. "Trinity" strategic combination: How to achieve the goal?

In order to achieve this grand goal, the platform has launched a "trinity" strategic combination, descending from the application layer to the infrastructure layer.

股票代币化 (Stock Token)

This is the "stepping stone" of its RWA strategy. By launching US stock tokens in the EU market, allowing users to trade 24/5 and receive dividend support, the platform is conducting a large-scale market education and technical validation. This move aims to bridge the interface between traditional assets and the on-chain world, enabling users accustomed to traditional investments to smoothly enter the crypto ecosystem.

Self-built L2 public chain

This is its most strategically ambitious step. By building its own Layer 2 public chain optimized for RWA based on the Arbitrum Orbit technology stack, the platform is transitioning from an "application" to an "infrastructure provider". Having its own public chain means mastering the rule-making power and the dominance of the ecosystem. In the future, all issuance, trading, and settlement of tokenized assets will be completed in a closed loop within this ecosystem, thereby constructing a strong technological and business moat.

Platformization (Broker-as-a-Platform)

Through a series of acquisitions and product launches, the platform is building a "crypto-driven all-in-one investment platform." This platform integrates trading, payment, asset management, and infrastructure, covering the full lifecycle of users from deposit, trading to asset appreciation, aiming to maximize the lifetime value (LTV) of individual users.

3. Comparative Analysis: Differences with Competitors

The platform's strategic positioning places it in a unique position within the competitive landscape.

vs. a certain cryptocurrency exchange

• Path differences: Some cryptocurrency exchanges are "on-chain exchanges", which focus on serving native crypto assets and gaining institutional trust through compliant pathways. This platform is a "on-chain brokerage", aiming to "blockchain-reform the old world" by bringing large traditional assets on-chain.
• Advantages Comparison: The advantages of a certain cryptocurrency exchange lie in its deep roots in the cryptocurrency industry, compliance depth, and institutional client base. The platform's advantages, on the other hand, are its large retail investor user base, exceptional product experience, and a more aggressive and focused RWA strategy.

vs. traditional brokerage

• Mode differences: Traditional brokers primarily serve high-net-worth and institutional clients, with income relying more on interest and advisory services. This platform serves younger, more active retail investors, with income relying more on trading commissions (especially in cryptocurrencies).
• Data comparison: This platform has surpassed two-thirds of a certain traditional brokerage in terms of account numbers, but the average assets per account (AUC) is only about 2% of the latter. This is both its shortcoming and its future growth potential. The current products it has launched, such as IRA retirement accounts and credit cards, are aimed at increasing user asset scale and stickiness, attacking the territory of traditional brokerages. In terms of trading revenue, especially the growth rate of cryptocurrency trading revenue, this platform has far exceeded traditional brokerages.

3. Tomorrow: The "First Entrance" to Reshaping the Financial Order? Opportunities and Risks Coexist

1. Potential impact on the financial market landscape

• Squeeze the liquidity of altcoins: When investors can trade blue-chip tokens with real value support on a compliant and convenient platform, the demand for high-risk, fundamentally weak altcoins and meme coins may be significantly diverted. In the future, the crypto market may further differentiate into "mainstream coins through ETFs" and "infrastructure coins that can link to traditional finance," resulting in many altcoins potentially having little presence.
• Reshaping Stock Trading Rules: 24/7 trading will completely break the pre-market and after-hours restrictions of traditional exchanges, having a profound impact on global liquidity distribution, price discovery mechanisms, and even market maker strategies.
• Accelerate the entry of traditional financial giants: The aggressive layout of this platform will become a "catalyst" that stirs the entire traditional financial industry. Its exploration will force traditional giants to accelerate their layout in the field of asset tokenization, triggering a new round of fintech arms race.

2. The platform's own opportunities and valuation reconstruction

If the strategy is successful, the platform will usher in huge development opportunities.

• Become the "first entry point" for RWA: With its large user base and leading product experience, this platform has the potential to become the core hub connecting trillions of dollars of real-world assets with the crypto ecosystem. It will simultaneously capture the dual era dividends of "intergenerational wealth transfer" and "Crypto Adoption".
• Valuation anchor change: Its valuation logic is undergoing a qualitative change. It is no longer a purely cyclical brokerage influenced by trading volume and interest rates, but rather a composite company with attributes of SaaS (subscription), fintech (platform effect), and infrastructure (public chain value). This multidimensional business model will greatly open up its growth ceiling, and the market will adopt a brand new model for its valuation.

3. Lingering Risks and Challenges

The platform's grand blueprint is not a smooth path, still facing three core challenges:

• Regulatory uncertainty: This is the biggest bottleneck to the realization of its strategy. There are many obstacles under the current regulatory framework, such as: how to define the legal attributes of RWA tokens? How can brokerages comply with the custody rules for digital assets? How to calculate the capital requirements for digital assets? Although the current political climate in the United States seems to be more favorable to the crypto industry, any changes in regulatory policies could pose a fatal threat to its business.
• Execution and Competitive Risks: Plans such as building an L2 public chain, integrating acquisitions, and achieving global expansion test the platform's strong project management and execution capabilities at every step. Meanwhile, competition from crypto-native rivals and awakened traditional financial giants will be exceptionally fierce.
• The inherent vulnerability of the business model: As