Bitcoin is nudging higher. Not a breakout yet, for me, this remains part of a massive upward-sloping consolidation. It does look promising. What we need for a true breakout is more explosive price action. Both Robinhood and Futu Holdings offer an indirect way to invest in the progress of Bitcoin and much else besides. You could call them warrants on the progress of the US and global financial markets.
Initially, I thought of Robinhood as a stockbroking platform, but I realise it is much more.
Financial services company Robinhood (HOOD) has rolled out an expansion of its crypto and investing services, offering European users access to tokenised US stocks and giving Americans the chance to earn rewards by staking cryptocurrencies like ethereum (ETH-USD) and solana (SOL-USD).
The move marks a pivotal moment for the fintech company as it looks to merge the fast-evolving world of blockchain with traditional finance.
Speaking to Yahoo Finance Future Focus, Robinhood crypto senior vice president and general manager Johann Kerbrat explained how the platform is leveraging blockchain technology to overhaul outdated systems and offer investors something different.
At the heart of Robinhood’s European expansion is the launch of tokenised US stocks and ETFs, digital representations of real equities issued on the blockchain.
These “stock tokens” allow users across 31 European countries to trade more than 200 US stocks and ETFs, including heavyweights like Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Tesla (TSLA), without paying any commission or spread fees. Robinhood applies a 0.10% foreign exchange fee.
“Right now, what we’re launching in Europe is that EU customer will have access to 200 plus US stocks and ETF tokens, and the stock token holder will also be able to receive dividends directly into their app,” Kerbrat said.
It means European users can gain exposure to the US market, something that can be expensive due to regulatory barriers and foreign exchange costs, while also receiving dividend payouts like traditional shareholders.
Yahoo Finance 11 July 2025
There are so many exciting things happening at HOOD.
When I look at our active trader offering, it just keeps getting more disruptive. We launched futures and prediction markets in Q1, and futures are accelerating nicely. So about 4.5 million contracts traded in April alone, which is more than all of Q1. So Q1, which was a strong quarter, greatly was accelerated in April. And prediction markets have done over 1 billion contracts in the last six months. And we’ve recently started to increase the breadth of the contracts we offer. So we’re still very much in the early stages there.
They also have a fast-improving platform for active traders.
On Robinhood Legend, which if you remember, we announced at Hood Summit late last year and launched fully a few months after that. We’ve been making a lot of improvements. We’ve upgraded speed. We’ve brought in new asset classes, like, crypto and index options. We’ve added support for joint accounts, more indicators and charts, and really more features being shipped on a weekly basis.
So the team has just been executing incredibly, quickly on making Robinhood Legend the best platform for active traders. And all of that has been driving strong incremental volume on the Legend platform. There’s actually a lot more to come. The team is already spending a lot of time preparing for the second annual active trader event, which we will be holding this fall.
Vlad Tenov, CEO, Robinhood, Q1 2025, 30 April 2025
The innovation activity at Robinhood is astounding.
We’re also working to serve far more of our customers’ assets. So at our Lost City of Gold event, just this past March, we announced three new products: Robinhood Strategies, Robinhood Cortex, and of course, Robinhood Banking. Pretty awesome that Robinhood Strategies already has over 40,000 customers, and over $100 million in assets. So that’s gone off to a very rapid start.
Robinhood Gold, so when you look at the gold credit card, we doubled the Gold cardholders to 200,000 just in the past few weeks and we love what we’re seeing. We know that there’s a ton of excitement about getting the credit card from customers. We see it on social media and in the questions, and we’re excited to accelerate the rollout from here. So already doubled and it’s going to continue.
Retirement assets, they’re now up to $16 billion, which is up about 20% just from the start of the year. And we closed the acquisition of TradePMR, which was bringing over $40 billion of platform assets to Robinhood. So a lot of progress on wallet share. And on global financial ecosystem, this is our 10 year arc. We continue to make the U.K. brokerage offering better and better, and we’re working on launching in Asia, so excited about that.
Vlad Tenov, CEO, Robinhood, Q1 2025, 30 April 2025
All this innovation is delivering great results.
As a result of the strong product velocity, we saw strong business results as well. Revenue is up 50% year-over-year. Trading volumes all up double-digits year-over-year, including a record quarter for options trading. Record net deposits as well, $18 billion of net deposits in the quarter. So I’m glad to see the strategy is working. Customers are not only trading more with us, but they’re entrusting us with more of their assets.
Gold subscribers nearly doubling year-over-year to $3.2 million as of the end of the quarter and actually now $3.3 million in April, and that’s a 12% plus adoption rate overall. But if you look at new customers who joined Robinhood in Q1, about one in three became Gold subscribers, relatively quickly.
And we look on international, that’s continuing to accelerate. We are now up to over 150,000 international customers, and that’s just going to keep going and going. So we feel great about our product velocity and the business results that it’s driving.
Vlad Tenov, CEO, Robinhood, Q1 2025, 30 April 2025
The good times have continued into the second quarter.
It’s also great to see momentum continuing into the second quarter. April net deposits are around $6.5 billion. Equities trading is a four year high. Options are in the zone of an all-time high, and crypto trading is north of $8 billion. Also, margin balances are about $8.4 billion, which is up 2x from last year.
Jason Warnick, CFO, Robinhood, Q1 2025, 30 April 2025
You can see why the CFO is excited.
Let’s talk for a moment about how we’re diversifying our business. You’ve heard me say that we have nine businesses that each generate over $100 million in annualized revenues, nearly double the number we had just a couple of years ago. And I’m excited to say, we have many more that are quickly scaling.
For example, we’ve recently launched three new products. Futures, index options and prediction markets, where the ARR [annual recurring revenue] for each of them individually is already around $20 million. And with the addition of TradePMR, we’ve added a business that has a $50 million run rate and a nice track record for growth.
And there are several more businesses that we recently announced and expect to begin contributing later this year, including Robinhood Strategies, Robinhood Banking and our acquisition of Bitstamp in the middle of the year. So we’re incredibly excited about all these new businesses, and I like our opportunity to build many of them into additional $100 million revenue businesses in the coming years.
Jason Warnick, CFO, Robinhood, Q1 2025, 30 April 2025
It is interesting to see how share buybacks are not just a way of returning funds to shareholders but another business opportunity.
I also want to give an update on our share repurchase program. You’ll recall we began executing on our $1 billion share repurchase plan in Q3 last year, with target completion over two to three years. Since then, we’ve moved faster and have deployed over $650 million at an average price of $33 per share. This includes over $300 million of buybacks in Q1, which more than offset share issuance for TradePMR.
Given our strong performance and positive outlook, our board has increased the authorization by $500 million, taking the program up to a total of $1.5 billion. We expect to deploy the remaining $800 million plus over roughly the next two years, but we’re keeping flexibility to accelerate if market conditions warrant.
Jason Warnick, CFO, Robinhood, Q1 2025, 30 April 2025
They have invested $650m at $33 a share, which is now worth approaching $2bn. Beats working for a living, so I am not surprised they have added another $500m to the programme. It doesn’t work quite like that because the shares they buy are cancelled, but the effect is similar. To buy the same number of shares now would cost around $2bn.
I have used this super long-term chart (each candlestick equals 12 months) to emphasise that the 2021 peak was a freak. Exclude that crazy jump based on near-negative interest rates, and we see the shares in a strong uptrend driven by the powerful growth of the underlying business.
Shares rise when a business becomes bigger. Futu is doing that in spades.
It is a similar type of business to Robinhood, but based in Hong Kong and much smaller.
Futu Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: FUTU) (“Futu” or the “Company”) is an advanced technology company transforming the investing experience by offering a fully digitalized brokerage and wealth management platform. Technology permeates every part of the business, allowing the Company to offer a redefined user experience built upon an agile, stable, scalable and secure platform. Futu primarily serves the emerging affluent population, pursuing a massive opportunity to facilitate a once-in-a-generation shift in the wealth management industry and build a digital gateway into broader financial services.
Futu Holdings website
The business is growing at a spectacular rate and becoming increasingly global.
“We started 2025 on a strong note, adding approximately 262 thousand funded accounts in the first quarter, up 47.8% year-over-year and 21.9% quarter-over-quarter. Total funded accounts reached 2.7 million, representing a 41.6% increase year-over-year and a 10.9% increase quarter-over-quarter. Hong Kong remained the top contributor to new funded accounts, as our marketing initiatives effectively leveraged the Hong Kong market rally and IPO boom. We believe that brokers with leading brand equity, product experience and execution capabilities will gain outsized benefits from strong equity market performance. Malaysia posted the fastest sequential growth in new funded accounts among all seven markets. After a year of rapid market share gain in Malaysia, we think there is ample headroom for further growth and will continue to invest in our product and our brand. In Japan, new funded accounts enjoyed robust growth and reached a historic high, as we solidified our position as the go-to broker for U.S. stock trading. Funded account growth accelerated in the U.S. as we enhanced our offerings for active traders and our high-profile advertising campaigns boosted brand visibility. With one-third of our full-year target already achieved, we remain firmly on track to meet our guidance of 800 thousand net new funded accounts in 2025.”
“Total client assets reached HK$829.8 billion, up 60.2% year-over-year and 11.6% quarter-over-quarter, thanks to record net asset inflow. In Singapore, total client assets rose 11.4% quarter-over-quarter, sustaining its streak of double-digit sequential growth. Average client assets in Canada and Australia also logged five straight quarters of sequential increase. Margin financing and securities lending balance at quarter end remained largely stable at HK$50.3 billion, due to lower risk appetite in the second half of the quarter amid market pullback.”
“Total trading volume was HK$3.22 trillion, up 140.1% year-over-year and 11.4% quarter-over-quarter. U.S. stock trading volume grew 8.2% sequentially to HK$2.25 trillion, bolstered by clients’ bottom fishing of technology and semiconductor names. Hong Kong stock trading volume increased 21.4% quarter-over-quarter to HK$916.0 billion, as DeepSeek-induced market rally reignited investor interest.”
Leaf Hua Li, CEO, Q1 2025, 29 May 2025
A key feature of Futu is non-stop innovation.
Research and development expenses were HK$386.0 million (US$49.6 million), an increase of 15.1% from the first quarter of 2024. This increase was primarily driven by investment in AI capabilities and related technology initiatives.
Leaf Hua Li, CEO, Q1 2025, 29 May 2025
Like Robinhood, Futu is positioning itself for the crypto market.
We’ll closely monitor our clients’ trading behaviors to iterate on our product, and we plan to increase the number of cryptocurrencies in the near future. So, from a long term perspective, we are very bullish about virtual assets as an asset class and for Futu the take rate for crypto trading is higher than cash equities, and we believe that as the regulatory landscape and the regulatory guidelines to become more clear, there will be more cryptocurrency allowed and more functions allowed, which will bring Futu more ways to monetize from this asset class.
And we believe that whether it’s from an AUM [assets under management] or revenue perspective, crypto has so much potential, and we’re still in the very, very early innings. And in terms of stablecoins, we’re aware of the relevant regulations being released recently, and Airstar Bank invested by Futu participates in the stablecoin sandbox and exploring ways to do stablecoin custody.
Leaf Hua Li, CEO, Q1 2025, 29 May 2025
Futu is a strong growth story.
Futu doesn’t pay dividends, so this graphic is all about actual (solid green) and projected (shaded green) earnings per share. It’s on a strong growth path. Investors must be suspicious of Futu because by 2027, the PE ratio will fall to 15, which is cheap by US standards. For comparison, Robinhood’s projected 2027 PE ratio is 56.
In the circumstances, it might be tempting to invest in both. If I am right and a huge bull market lies ahead, this would be a following wind for both businesses.
Share Recommendations
Robinhood. HOOD
Futu Holdings. FUTU
I haven’t decided whether to add Futu Holdings to my Top 20 group (presently 18) because I have had such varied experiences with Hong Kong-quoted shares in the past.
