Memecoin Boom on Robinhood and Circle's Blockchains Fizzles Out Quickly

Robinhood Chain, launched by the fintech company this summer, experienced a brief but intense surge in memecoin trading activity. In September, daily trading volume for memecoin-stock-token pairs skyrocketed from nearly zero in July to $443 million, according to CryptoQuant. However, this frenzy was short-lived, with trading activity plummeting by 96% shortly after.

The excitement also sparked a wave of new token creations, with about 26,000 tokens launched daily on the chain in September, peaking at nearly 45,000 on September 8. Most of these tokens quickly became worthless, a common fate for the majority of cryptocurrencies.

Robinhood Chain wasn't the only platform to see a surge in trading. Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, launched Arc, a blockchain aimed at institutional trading. On its first day of public trading, memecoin launchpads on Arc generated over $336 million in trading volume.

Experts interviewed by Fortune noted that this pattern of memecoin speculation driving early trading activity is familiar in the crypto space. Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, described it as a temporary way to attract attention and money but warned that most of these assets will trend to zero. Jim Thorne, chief market strategist at Wellington-Altus, compared the frenzy to trading Pokémon cards but emphasized that tokenization technology itself is here to stay.