Robinhood built a blockchain for tokenized stocks. Memecoins took over
Robinhood Chain, the blockchain community constructed by the favored buying and selling app to energy tokenized shares, has change into one of many busiest new chains in crypto. However regardless of being constructed round tokenized shares and different real-world property (RWAs), speculative memecoin buying and selling has to this point change into the community’s defining use case.
A cat-themed token known as CASHCAT, named after Robinhood’s former mascot earlier than the corporate rebranded, has surged 2,158% over the previous 7 days, and the memecoin has a $156 million market cap. By comparability, tokenized real-world property on the chain are price simply $12.81 million, of which $10.68 million is shares, with the remainder cut up throughout commodities, tokenized ETFs and a $410,000 sliver of U.S. Treasuries as of Monday morning.
The distinction comes because the chain has posted explosive early progress because it formally went stay on July 1.
Information reviewed by CoinDesk reveals that complete worth locked for the chain reached about $135 million, up greater than sevenfold from $17 million on July 3, in line with DefiLlama. It even ranked among the many prime three networks for decentralized change buying and selling quantity over the previous week, producing $3.1 billion in quantity.
This implies the tokenized-equity guide stays tiny in a series that clears billions of {dollars} in weekly buying and selling quantity. The sample is just like when distinguished change Coinbase launched its personal community, Base, in 2023. Memecoins and hypothesis stuffed it first, whereas the sturdy functions arrived later, per CoinDesk reviews from that point.
