Bernstein has reiterated its Outperform rating on Robinhood Markets, maintaining a $160 price target after identifying Robinhood Chain as a potentially meaningful new source of fee revenue for the brokerage. The target represents roughly 31% upside from Robinhood’s $122.11 closing price on Friday, when the shares fell 2.09%.
In a client note dated Tuesday, Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani said Robinhood Chain had generated approximately $39 million in cumulative fees since its July 1 launch. The analysts estimated that annual fees could reach $160 million by 2028, giving the company a growing revenue stream tied to blockchain activity rather than only trading commissions, subscriptions, and interest income.
Bernstein said the network has recently been generating between $2 million and $4 million a day in trading fees. That pace places Robinhood’s blockchain venture among the more active venues for on-chain trading, according to the analysts’ comparison of fee data across networks.
Robinhood retains most chain-generated fees
The central feature of Bernstein’s estimate is Robinhood’s reported share of the fees produced on its Layer-2 network. The analysts said Robinhood retains about 90% of fees generated on Robinhood Chain, while roughly 10% goes to Arbitrum for technology services and less than 1% is paid to Ethereum for data availability fees.
Layer-2 networks process transactions away from Ethereum’s main blockchain before posting information back to it, a structure designed to reduce transaction costs and increase capacity. For Robinhood, retaining most transaction revenue would give the company a business model closer to operating financial infrastructure than simply providing access to third-party crypto venues.
Over the 15 days reviewed by Bernstein, Robinhood Chain generated about $33 million in fees, the analysts said. That compared with approximately $11 million for Solana and $9 million for BNB Chain during the same period.
The comparison should be read carefully: fees do not measure every aspect of a blockchain’s size, and fee totals can rise when trading becomes more speculative or when a network’s pricing structure changes. Yet a high share of retained fees gives Robinhood an incentive to direct tokenized assets and trading activity toward its own network rather than rely entirely on outside blockchains.
Tokenized stocks drive early network activity
Bernstein linked much of Robinhood Chain’s early growth to tokenized equities, digital tokens intended to provide exposure to shares or share-linked products. The analysts said the value of tokenized stocks on the network increased from about $10 million to $140 million over the past two months.
For the week ending Aug. 30, Robinhood Chain handled roughly 32% of transfer value involving tokenized equities, Bernstein said, ranking second behind BNB Chain. Transfer value measures assets moved across a network and can indicate activity, though it does not necessarily reflect the number of individual users or long-term holdings.
The network had also accumulated about $1.5 billion in total value locked and processed more than $50 billion in decentralized-exchange volume since launch, according to the note. Total value locked tracks assets deposited in on-chain applications, while decentralized-exchange volume represents trades completed through blockchain-based protocols.
Those figures suggest Robinhood is building a transaction environment around tokenized products rather than launching a chain that depends solely on the company’s existing retail trading base. The strategy could connect its stock-trading brand with on-chain settlement, stablecoin liquidity, and decentralized trading tools, though the durability of the activity will depend on whether volumes persist beyond an initial launch period.
Stablecoin supply has reached $1 billion
Stablecoin balances on Robinhood Chain also expanded sharply following the July launch. Bernstein said total supply reached approximately $1 billion, rising from about $241 million in early July.
USDG accounted for around 66% of the stablecoin supply, according to the analysts, while USDe represented another 33%. A stablecoin base gives traders a settlement asset for on-chain stock tokens and decentralized trading, reducing the need to move funds back to a traditional brokerage account between transactions.
The concentration in two stablecoins also creates a clear dependency. Growth in tokenized equities and decentralized trading would rely partly on the continued liquidity, stability, and accessibility of those assets. Stablecoin issuers, their reserve structures, and the regulatory treatment of digital-dollar products remain central considerations for any network seeking to support finance-related activity at scale.
Bernstein’s fee forecast places Robinhood Chain within a larger effort by brokerages and fintech companies to control more of the infrastructure behind digital-asset transactions. A company-owned network can capture fees from transfers, swaps, collateral movement, and tokenized asset trading that would otherwise flow to external blockchains or service providers.
Robinhood shares remain below Bernstein’s $160 target, reflecting the market’s uncertainty over how quickly blockchain revenue can become material relative to the company’s larger operations. The early data cited by Bernstein offers evidence of rapid activity, but the 2028 fee estimate assumes that Robinhood can retain users, liquidity, and tokenized-asset issuance as competing chains pursue the same business.
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