The final quarter of 2024 saw a monstrous run-up in the price of cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin soared over 25% to break $100,000 following the election of Donald Trump and a crypto-friendly Republican Congress. While crypto markets have posted a modest retreat in the final two weeks of December, the overall trends remain highly bullish. Those trends include the ongoing embrace of crypto by Wall Street; the popularity of crypto ETFs with retail investors; the end of a scorched earth enforcement campaign by the Securities and Exchange Commission; and the impending passage of pro-crypto legislation in Washington, D.C. All of this points to a strong 2025 for the digital assets industry, but two publicly traded companies are in an especially good position: Coinbase and Robinhood.
The companies both went public in early 2021 and have since followed similar trajectories. After charging out of the gate, the share prices of both Coinbase and Robinhood took nosedives following a series of shifts in the macroeconomy and the scandal-driven implosion of the crypto markets in late 2022. By 2023, both firms were scuffling so badly they lost more than 80% of their value and were forced to implement multiple rounds of layoffs.
The story has since changed dramatically. In the final hours of 2024, Coinbase shares were up around 60% from the start of the year while Robinhood shares had quadrupled in value. A big portion of these increases came in Q4 after November’s election results brought about a broad change in crypto’s political fortunes. The question now is how much these new conditions could translate to a lift for Robinhood and Coinbase in 2025.
The two companies are hardly the same, of course. Robinhood made its name as a go-to place for trading stocks and options, and has since added a growing suite of wealth management tools as it seeks to challenge the likes of Charles Schwab and Fidelity. Coinbase, in contrast, launched as the first compliance-focused crypto exchange and has since established itself as the flagship brand of the digital assets industry.
In recent years, though, Robinhood has made major inroads into digital assets, building its own noncustodial wallet while crypto has become its second-biggest revenue stream. Coinbase, meanwhile, has built bridges in the traditional finance industry as a custodian for the major Wall Street ETF providers, and by offering interest-bearing stablecoin accounts.
This means Robinhood and Coinbase are poised to compete more directly, but both will benefit from a growing pie as the worlds of crypto and traditional finance increasingly converge—a trend the companies are ideally positioned to ride, especially compared to traditional Wall Street and pure-play crypto firms.
In the short term, the latest crypto boom will translate into big tailwinds from trading revenues. Robinhood and Coinbase will only post Q4 earnings in February, but look for monster results in light of the market frenzy driven by the huge Bitcoin rally. The history of the crypto markets shows this is likely to be followed by a prolonged downturn as the latest crypto hype fades, but the broader structural changes set to benefit the industry mean both companies are set to reap long-term benefits.
The fast-emerging stablecoin market, in particular, is likely to emerge as a major business line for both Coinbase and Robinhood. In 2025, the U.S. is widely expected to pass legislation that will help make stablecoins a cornerstone of global commerce—a development that is also being anticipated by payments giant Stripe, which recently acquired stablecoin firm Bridge for $1.1 billion.
Meanwhile, Coinbase is poised to enjoy additional growth from its fast-growing Base blockchain—which has quietly become a major competitor to Ethereum—and its offshore derivatives exchange. Robinhood is also set to capitalize on its own recent crypto-related initiatives, including its foray into prediction markets and its growing crypto presence in Europe.
The bottom line is that both Robinhood and Coinbase have evolved from firms reliant on a feast-or-famine business model based around temporary trading trends, and into companies that occupy the pole position as crypto becomes a mainstay of global finance.
