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With the convergence of crypto and stock trading, Robinhood’s shares are trouncing Coinbase’s.

Robinhood and Coinbase are two of the most popular trading apps, historically concentrating on equities and crypto, respectively. But more and more, they’re competing head to head. Coinbase is launching stock trading, while Robinhood is expanding in crypto. Both are also betting big on prediction markets.

Yet as far as stock performance goes, the two companies couldn’t look more different. Robinhood’s shares rose 186% last year, while Coinbase’s fell 12%. The performance difference is particularly stark given the crypto-friendly administration currently in Washington could have given a boost to Coinbase. Robinhood shares are trading at a price-earnings ratio of 48, based on estimated earnings over the next 12 months, versus Coinbase’s ratio of 41, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The stock and crypto markets are increasingly overlapping. It has become easy to effectively trade crypto on the stock market, and crypto markets are moving toward offering a type of stock trading. That convergence has set up a rivalry between Robinhood and Coinbase, which are now competing to serve the same customers and their financial needs.

Robinhood has moved more quickly into new markets than Coinbase has, and its shares performed better last year in part because it had less exposure to the crypto sell-off. This year, the competition could be closer.

Despite crypto volatility, Coinbase shares were on the upswing last year until October, when crypto suffered its biggest decline since FTX’s collapse in 2022. The crypto market is still reeling from that setback, as are Coinbase’s shares.

Robinhood generated about 20% of its revenue from its crypto business in last year’s third quarter.

“If there’s a crypto winter, they’re not going to be suffering from it as much as Coinbase will,” said Dan Dolev, equity research senior analyst at Mizuho, who has a buy rating on Robinhood and a neutral rating on Coinbase. Robinhood, just like Coinbase, offers trading and custody services for crypto, but it lists fewer tokens than Coinbase does.

Robinhood has moved faster and has bet big on surging prediction markets. It launched its first event contract—for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election—in late 2024, and it quickly expanded the offering with more contracts in areas such as sports. Prediction markets became its fastest-growing revenue line, reaching $300 million in annualized revenue, based on figures for the month of October. It has since doubled down on the business by partnering with trading firm Susquehanna International Group in November to buy an exchange that will support prediction markets.

Coinbase is catching up. It waited a year to get into the sector—initially preferring to invest in prediction market startups built on its Base blockchain—even as contenders such as Polymarket took off ahead of the presidential election in 2024. Coinbase finally announced plans to launch its own prediction market last month, in partnership with Kalshi.

Coinbase was also slow on offering stock trading. That may have hurt it during the crypto downturn, when some investors left that market in favor of better-performing stocks. The S&P 500 index, for example, outperformed bitcoin last year, returning 18% versus bitcoin’s decline of 6%.

For years, Coinbase said it wouldn’t get into stocks, focusing instead on building the crypto economy, but it has now changed that stance. The reason, according to Coinbase, is that launching stocks would pave the way for eventually offering tokenized stocks—crypto tokens that represent equities on blockchain. It’s also part of the company’s “everything exchange” strategy to keep users and their money on the platform.

And even on tokenized stocks, Robinhood has moved faster. It already offers about 2,000 stock tokens in Europe after having launched the product last June, said Johann Kerbrat, general manager of Robinhood Crypto. The company picked a format that allows it to move faster without waiting for U.S. regulatory changes. The stock tokens are not actual equities, but rather derivatives that track the price of a stock. Robinhood passes along the economic interest, including dividends, to token holders, but they don’t have the right to vote as shareholders.

Coinbase has said it prefers launching crypto tokens that are linked to the stock directly rather than through a fund. That’s a longer path to take, because it will require regulatory changes from the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as working with the companies that issue the stocks.

But Robinhood’s move-fast ethos means it sometimes runs into barriers. Last June, Robinhood announced it would offer tokens representing OpenAI and SpaceX to users in Europe. The announcement drew swift pushback from OpenAI, which denounced the product, as well as inquiries from Robinhood’s main regulator in Europe, Bank of Lithuania.

Beyond the initial token giveaways during the promotion, Robinhood hasn’t expanded the product to more private companies, said Kerbrat. He also declined to say when private company tokens would be available in Europe.

Kerbrat said Robinhood answered questions from its European regulator and is also engaging with the U.S. SEC on tokenization rules. One barrier is the accredited investor rules, which restrict small, individual investors from trading private company shares.

Robinhood is hoping to profit from the expected initial public offerings of startups like SpaceX and Anthropic. It is currently seeking SEC approval for Robinhood Ventures, a closed-end fund investing in private startups that it hopes to offer to U.S. individual investors. If the approval comes in time, that could provide Robinhood’s customers with a way to gain pre-IPO exposure.

A Coinbase spokesperson said Coinbase Tokenize will bring new assets including equities, private companies, funds and real estate onto the blockchain. The company didn’t share a timeline.

The bull case for Coinbase includes a proposed federal law regulating the crypto market and a rebound in crypto. “Coinbase is more correlated to altcoin trading volume and sentiment,” said Owen Lau, equity research managing director at financial services firm Clear Street, referring to the wide range of smaller crypto tokens. “If it gets passed, that could trigger altcoin summer,” added Lau, who picked Coinbase as one of his top 2026 buy ideas.

The law could also lead to more new token launches. That could bode well for Coinbase, which spent $375 million last year to buy Echo, an initial token offering platform, in one of its bigger purchases last year.