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Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine, stated in an interview that in the era of artificial intelligence, the vision and judgment of company founders are more important than ever. What truly drives company development is not asking questions to AI, but the ability to create a future direction.The existence of OpenAI is inseparable from Sam Altman's vision; the development of Anthropic and AI-related companies under Elon Musk is similarly dependent on this. The core value of these founders lies in proposing long-term strategies and directions, rather than simply asking their AI models what to do next.Tom Lee also categorizes Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev in the same group, believing that he is leading a company in a rapidly growing market, a market that is growing even faster than the overall economy. Vlad Tenev is also one of the important reasons he is optimistic about Robinhood stock.Tom Lee believes that in the AI era, while technology itself may gradually become widespread, the ability of founders to define market direction and drive organizational execution will still become a long-term competitive advantage for companies.

Coinbase's official account posted that AiFi (the application form combining AI and finance) is already happening. The post pointed out that when AI agents generate funding needs, they will choose to use Coinbase-related services.The post also included a promotional link, emphasizing Coinbase's positioning in AI agent payment and fund processing scenarios. Currently, the publicly available information mainly consists of directional statements, and specific product details, partner lists, or transaction data have not yet been disclosed.

According to data from DefiLlama, Robinhood Chain's DEX trading volume in the past 24 hours exceeded $503 million, ranking fifth across all chains, only behind Solana, Ethereum mainnet, BNB Chain, and Base.

According to a report by Reuters, Robinhood's second venture capital fund, Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII), has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange, allowing ordinary investors to participate in investing in unlisted startups. RVII opened at a price of $22.5 on the New York Stock Exchange, raising approximately $225.5 million.The second fund will focus on existing and former participants of the Y Combinator startup accelerator program, which has funded over 5,000 companies since 2005, including 100 "unicorn" companies. Notable investments from Y Combinator include the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, the social media platform Reddit, and the developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI.

The head of Robinhood's crypto department, Johann Kerbrat, recently accepted an interview on threadguy's podcast.In the interview, Kerbrat stated: "Compared to other blockchains, one of our key differences is that we only launched the chain, not a token. For us, the blockchain is a pure technology, the infrastructure that supports all our new businesses. We do not need to constantly adjust our strategic priorities to maintain the rise or stability of token prices. This avoids significant disruptions and is a huge advantage for us."

According to official news from Robinhood, Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII) announced the pricing of its initial public offering, issuing 8 million shares of common stock at a price of $25 per share. The total size of the fund is $225.5 million (before deducting sales expenses and issuance costs), and if the underwriters fully exercise the option to purchase an additional 1.2 million shares, the size could reach up to $255.5 million.Shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on August 13, with the stock ticker RVII, and the issuance is expected to be completed on August 14. Goldman Sachs is serving as the lead bookrunner for this offering, with Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, UBS Investment Bank, and Wells Fargo Securities as co-bookrunners.

According to The Block, Robinhood's nominal cryptocurrency trading volume in July decreased by 33% month-over-month and by 62% year-over-year to $10.9 billion. Among them, the nominal cryptocurrency trading volume on the Robinhood app decreased by 74% year-over-year to $4.3 billion, while Bitstamp's trading volume decreased by 45% to $6.6 billion.

According to The Block, the average daily trading volume on Robinhood Chain rose to 11.6 million last Sunday, setting a new historical high, an increase of about 30% compared to the previous week; the total value locked (TVL) on the chain increased to $473 million, a weekly increase of 32%.However, the number of daily active accounts grew only 3.3% week-on-week and is still 11% lower than the peak on July 16, indicating that the growth in trading and funds mainly comes from existing users rather than new users.

According to The Defiant, Cole Villemain, the co-founder of the well-known NFT project Pudgy Penguins, who was voted out by the community, launched a series of 44,000 NFTs named Spritehood on Robinhood Chain on August 11, selling out in less than an hour.According to on-chain statistics of minting transactions by analyst 0xlaplaced, this sale generated approximately $1.2829 million (equivalent to about 684.28 ETH at the minting price), higher than the approximately $755,000 figure circulating during the sale, which was a snapshot taken while the sale was still ongoing. According to the statistics, the paid sale lasted about 53 minutes, during which 37,430 pieces were sold for $17 each, and 5,526 pieces were sold for $117 each. Before the paid sale began, the deploying party also distributed 1,488 pieces for free through 20 zero-price transactions.Reports indicate that the Spritehood contract itself is displayed as unverified source code on the Blockscout browser of Robinhood Chain, preventing buyers from reviewing the public code regarding its token pricing and distribution mechanism. Cole Villemain was voted out of the founding team by the Pudgy Penguins holder community in January 2022, accompanied by accusations of misappropriating project funds, but the related accusations have remained at the level of allegations, and Villemain has not been prosecuted as a result.

According to data from DefiLlama, Robinhood Chain's DEX trading volume exceeded $650 million in the past 24 hours, ranking fourth across all chains, only behind Solana, BNB Chain, and the Ethereum mainnet.

According to the disclosure from the Common platform, Sushi DAO has released an RFC proposal to comprehensively restructure the SUSHI token economic model. The proposal suggests replacing the current xSUSHI fee distribution mechanism with a more balanced framework, specifically including: reducing the xSUSHI buyback scale to a sustainable level, establishing a protocol reserve (SUSHI Reserve) through weekly regular purchases of SUSHI, and allocating the remaining protocol revenue to Sushi Ops for operations and growth.In addition, the proposal also plans to migrate part of the protocol liquidity deployment to the Robinhood Chain. Currently, the proposal is in the RFC (Request for Comments) stage, pending community discussion and governance voting.

According to GMGN data, the market value of the Robinhood Chain ecosystem project StonkBrokers (STONKBROKER) briefly surpassed $92 million, currently reported at approximately $91.43 million, with a daily increase of over 18%. StonkBrokers is an NFT + DeFi composite project launched by the Web3 team Clutch Labs, aimed at allowing NFTs to have independent on-chain wallets through ERC-6551 token binding account technology, and creating an on-chain "stock broker" combined with a tokenized stock reward mechanism.The project issues 4,444 pixel-style NFTs, each bound to an independent on-chain account, and can hold tokenized stock assets including Tesla, Amazon, Palantir, AMD, and others. After users activate the NFT, they can receive stock token rewards converted from protocol trading fees. The StonkBrokers ecosystem includes products such as Anvil NFT AMM, Stonk Launcher, and the planned Stonk Exchange, with the token STONKBROKER usable for NFT trading, activation, and future ecosystem governance.Market Reminder: Meme coins and emerging ecosystem tokens are highly volatile, and rapid increases or corrections may occur in a short time. Please pay attention to liquidity and holding risks.

Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine and Co-founder of Fundstrat, stated that the blockchain project Robinhood Chain launched by Robinhood has become the "biggest success story" in the crypto industry for 2026, being a groundbreaking project in terms of cumulative trading volume, total value locked (TVL), and potential market size.Lee pointed out that the biggest advantage of Robinhood Chain lies in its massive user base. Robinhood (HOOD) is opening this service to its approximately 27 million users, which itself constitutes a huge potential market. Ethereum (ETH) has also been continuously developing in recent years, although its growth has been relatively low-key, gradually expanding its application scope mainly through stablecoin settlements and crypto payments and asset purchases on platforms like Shopify.He believes that directly connecting 27 million Robinhood users to the Ethereum economic system will have a significant impact on the crypto industry, likely further promoting the expansion of blockchain applications from native crypto users to mainstream financial users. The success of Robinhood Chain is not only reflected in its technological aspects but, more importantly, in its ability to connect traditional financial users, trading platforms, and the Ethereum ecosystem, potentially becoming an important case for the mainstream adoption of crypto assets.

According to the official announcement, Robinhood has launched cryptocurrency trading services for UK investors, offering trading of over 50 crypto assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Hyperliquid through Bitstamp UK, with zero trading fees and no account management or custody fees. This service will be integrated into Robinhood's existing app, alongside products such as stock ISAs, options, and futures.Robinhood also launched the AI analysis tool Cortex Digests, which uses generative AI to analyze news, market data, and technical indicators, providing investors with concise interpretations of cryptocurrency price fluctuations. Since the global launch of Robinhood Chain on July 1, DEX trading volume has exceeded $18 billion, and total locked value has surpassed $840 million. UK developers can build applications on this Layer 2 chain. Cryptocurrency trading is provided through Bitstamp UK and is not protected by FSCS or FOS, with trading involving the risk of principal loss.

On-chain analyst Tom Wan posted on the X platform, stating that the total market value of on-chain assets related to Robinhood has reached 1 billion USD. Among them: stablecoin assets account for about 58%; Ethereum (ETH) accounts for about 28%; yield-bearing stablecoins account for about 10%.

According to Cointelegraph, Nansen's CEO Alex Svanevik stated in a recent interview that Robinhood is unlikely to launch a token, as this could create competition with its publicly traded stock HOOD.Alex Svanevik pointed out that the Layer 2 network currently launched by Robinhood is already operating based on the Ethereum ecosystem and has a Gas token for paying network fees, so there is no need to issue an additional platform token. He believes that the core purpose of Robinhood's layout of blockchain infrastructure is to enhance product capabilities using blockchain technology, rather than financing through token issuance or building a new economic model.Previously, the market speculated that Robinhood might follow some crypto projects to launch an ecosystem token, but it seems that the company is more likely to use blockchain as an underlying technological tool rather than building a business system around tokens.

According to Decrypt, Robinhood's head of cryptocurrency business, Johann Kerbrat, stated in an interview that Robinhood Chain has performed strongly in its first month. He pointed out that the chain is positioned to balance traditional financial products (tokenized stocks, derivatives) with meme coins—this is exactly what CEO Vlad Tenev expressed in his "two wolves" post. One month after its launch, Robinhood Chain's total value locked (TVL) has approached $800 million, processing over 200 million transactions.Kerbrat stated that the choice of Ethereum Layer-2 was to concentrate resources on product development while relying on existing security and decentralization. Robinhood's ultimate goal is to reach users who have never used cryptocurrency, rather than competing for existing users with other chains. "If we can see tens of millions of customers trying to use this chain, that would be a huge success for us."

Robinhood announced on the X platform that it has lowered the gas fee subsidy threshold for Robinhood Wallet on the Robinhood Chain from $5 to $0.50, a reduction of 90%.Robinhood stated that after the adjustment, more users will be able to enjoy gas fee subsidies when conducting swap transactions, and this subsidy policy will last until September 29.Previously, Robinhood Wallet had already covered part of the on-chain transaction fees for users through the gas sponsorship mechanism. This reduction in the subsidy threshold aims to further lower the entry costs for users into the Robinhood Chain ecosystem and enhance the activity of on-chain transactions.

Joseph Chalom, CEO of the Ethereum treasury company SharpLink, posted in opposition to Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-8363. According to his disclosure, the current network issues new ETH to validators as staking rewards at a variable yield rate of about 2.75%. If the proposal is passed, it will be implemented in phases over approximately a year and a half, gradually destroying part of the issuance rewards as the staking amount increases. When about 50% of ETH is staked, the staking yield will drop to 0%, and validators will only be able to rely on transaction fees, which currently account for only 15% of staking rewards, to sustain themselves.Chalom presented four points of opposition:Staking yield is the factual benchmark for all on-chain interest rates. The approximately $35 billion TVL of liquid staking tokens is the core collateral for on-chain lending. A yield of zero will raise on-chain capital costs, making actual yields approach or even become negative. Collateral will migrate to assets that still generate yields, and independent stakers and small to medium operators will be the first to be squeezed out.The native yield characteristic is precisely the key reason institutions choose ETH over Bitcoin. Erasing this difference is equivalent to voluntarily giving up its competitive advantage just as ETH is outperforming Bitcoin.Issuance is not a cost to external parties but a transfer of value to security maintainers and builders within the network. Destroying it is a destruction of value rather than a redistribution of this portion of value.The current timing is the worst; Ethereum is in a rising phase of institutional adoption, and destruction incentives will suppress this wave of adoption momentum.He stated that SharpLink agrees with the proposal authors' goal of making ETH scarce and stabilizing the staking rate at a reasonable level, but believes this should be achieved through the existing base fee destruction mechanism rather than altering the economic foundation of the protocol.