Inside Robinhood’s high-stakes bet to ‘democratizing’ its 10 million casual users onto blockchain finance

Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) account for just $12.66 million in active market capitalization despite the recent spike in trading activity.

Much of that larger activity, instead, came from memecoin traders piling into a new token, CASHCAT, named after Robinhood’s former company mascot. The token rallied by more than 2,100% in its first week, briefly reaching a $156 million market cap, which is 12 times larger than the chain’s entire tokenized real-world asset market.

It’s worth noting, though, that memecoins are volatile and hype-driven by nature, often lacking durable growth. That lack of sustainability was evident on Wednesday, when Noxa, the token launcher that spawned CashCat, announced it had stopped operating while directing all revenue to creators. The shutdown does not determine the fate of Robinhood Chain, but it underscores how quickly activity built around memecoin launches can disappear.

Ironically, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told CNBC on July 2 that memecoins were a dead end – assets with no utility that serve no purpose. Six days later, he posted that Robinhood Chain “works great for memes too,” presumably after seeing CASHCAT’s success.

Asked about the apparent contradiction, the company did not directly address it. “The early activity on Robinhood Chain is exciting: developers are building, users are engaging, and the chain is performing as designed,” Lee said.