The third quarter made Robinhood, Coinbase and Circle busier than ever, but not proportionally richer. Robinhood collected $146 million more from event-contract trading while crypto revenue fell by $148 million. Coinbase kept $35 million less of its USDC revenue after paying out customer rewards. Circle's revenue declined 8% once the ARC token presale is stripped out, and although USDC transaction volume jumped 49%, reserve income slipped 8%.

Robinhood's October 27 results, Coinbase's October 29 earnings presentation, and Circle's November 4 release put hard numbers on that trade-off, although none of the three companies reports profit by product line. The comparisons below set each new revenue line against the costs the companies do disclose: exchange fees, customer rewards, and payments to distribution partners.

Event Contracts Filled the Gap Crypto Trading Left

Robinhood posted record quarterly revenue of $1.42 billion, up 12% from a year earlier. Inside that total, cryptocurrency revenue fell from $268 million to $120 million, while event-contract revenue climbed from $27 million to $173 million, according to its revenue breakdown filed with the SEC. Both lines sit within transaction-based revenue, so trading on sports results, elections and other events filled the hole left by crypto.

Coindoo's coverage of Robinhood's prediction-market venues showed event contracts overtaking crypto revenue in the second quarter. The third quarter adds a less flattering detail: what each contract earns.

Revenue per contract calculated from Robinhood's reported revenue and contract counts.

Contract volume grew roughly twice as fast as the revenue it produced, meaning each contract brought in less money than before. The figure is an average across all contracts and venues, and Robinhood does not break out pricing by venue. Still, a business paid per contract only grows revenue as fast as volume if that average holds.

Both Robinhood and Coinbase are now moving closer to the exchange side of the trade to keep more of each contract. Robinhood says Rothera, its joint venture with Susquehanna, passed $100 million in annualized revenue in its first full quarter, and it lists Rothera-related expenses among the drivers of a 16% rise in operating expenses. It also discloses that it neither wholly owns nor operationally controls the venture. Coinbase, whose prediction business has passed $200 million in annualized revenue, said that growth raised the exchange fees within its transaction expenses, which reached 17% of net revenue. Chief executive Brian Armstrong said the company's new CFTC approval to list its own contracts should improve those economics. The CFTC is the US agency that regulates futures and certain event contracts.

Event contracts also carry a legal risk that Robinhood spells out in its results: enforcement actions, litigation or changes in federal or state law could stop it from offering them, and the company has previously dropped certain new contracts because of actual or threatened state enforcement.

Record revenue did not lift profit either. Operating expenses grew faster than revenue, and net income fell 14% to $476 million. Adjusted net income, which excludes $67 million of unrealized losses tied to a Robinhood Ventures fund and other items, fell 3%.

Coinbase Pays More to Hold a Record USDC Pile

Coinbase needed its stablecoin business more this quarter. Transaction revenue fell about 44% from a year earlier to $590.2 million, and chief financial officer Alesia Haas said most of the $719 million in net income came from unrealized gains on crypto the company holds as investments. Adjusted net income was $78 million.

Average USDC held in Coinbase products reached a record $22 billion. Those balances earn Coinbase a share of the interest on USDC's reserves, and Armstrong told investors the exchange captures "about 50% of all USDC economics." The cost of attracting those balances appears elsewhere in the quarterly filing, because USDC rewards are booked as sales and marketing rather than netted against stablecoin revenue.

Source: Coinbase's Q3 2026 Form 10-Q. Remainders calculated from unrounded figures, before other costs and taxes. Prior-year revenue uses the filing's reclassified comparison, so it differs from the figure Coinbase originally reported for Q3 2025.

Stablecoin revenue slipped about 5% year over year, while rewards rose about 16%. The amount left after rewards fell about 17%, before any other cost is counted.

The rewards bill is also reaching beyond retail accounts. Haas said the fourth-quarter rise in marketing spend includes a full quarter of USDC rewards paid to Hyperliquid, the decentralized derivatives exchange, and Coinbase's full-year expense outlook cites growing investment in USDC rewards.

Management argues the spending buys more than balances. Rewards are part of the pitch for Coinbase One, the paid subscription: Armstrong said rewards on $1,500 of USDC alone cover the membership fee, and he described subscribers as Coinbase's most valuable customers. Stablecoin revenue also rose 5% from the second quarter, which Haas credited to higher balances and interest rates. The filing does not show how much subscription or trading revenue the rewards generate, though, so the year-over-year drop in what Coinbase keeps is the only part of that trade a reader can measure.

One Pool of USDC Income, Two Sets of Books

Circle's results show the other side of the same arrangement. Its distribution, transaction and other costs fell 8% to $412 million, mostly because of lower payments to distribution partners, the largest of which is Coinbase. Coinbase's smaller stablecoin revenue and Circle's lower distribution bill largely describe one shrinking pool from two companies' accounts, which is why Coindoo's explainer on who earns the interest on USDC treats them as a single income stream. What shrank the pool was the interest rate, not demand.

Circle's Growth Came From a Token Sale, Not From USDC

ARC is the native token of Arc, Circle's own blockchain. The presale accounts for $182 million of the $207 million Circle booked as other revenue — a line that brought in $29 million a year earlier — while subscription and services revenue declined. Circle agreed to sell $242.2 million of ARC in total and kept its full-year guidance for other revenue at $310 million to $330 million. Income of this kind depends on investors buying a token, not on businesses paying Circle to move money.

Without the sale, interest rates pushed the core business backwards. Average USDC in circulation grew 8% to $73.3 billion, but the return on reserves fell 0.61 percentage points to 3.5%, cutting reserve income 8% to about $658 million, according to Circle's quarterly filing. Reserve income is the interest earned on the assets backing USDC — held largely in cash and short-dated US Treasury instruments whose yields follow benchmark rates — so it tracks the rate environment rather than usage. Circulation at the end of September, $73.9 billion, was roughly unchanged from a year earlier.

Activity grew far faster than income. Onchain USDC transaction volume rose 49% to $13.9 trillion, and the Circle Payments Network reached $41.3 billion in annualized payment volume — a run rate rather than the amount processed during the quarter. Neither figure is fee revenue. Chief financial officer Jeremy Fox-Geen said on the earnings call that he expects material revenue from the payments network in 2027, which leaves paid payments income outside this year's results.

Profit growth leaned on the same two items. Adjusted EBITDA rose 85% to $317 million, which Circle attributed to the presale and lower distribution costs, partly offset by spending on new products.

Four Lines to Watch in the Fourth-Quarter Reports

The next round of results can show whether these businesses keep more as they grow, or only get bigger.

Robinhood's revenue per event contract. An average holding near one cent as Rothera scales would mean contract growth is turning into revenue; a further slide would mean more contracts are needed for each dollar.

Coinbase's stablecoin revenue minus USDC rewards. Coinbase expects higher average interest rates to support subscription revenue, but it has also flagged a full quarter of Hyperliquid rewards. A larger remainder would back management's case; a smaller one alongside record balances would show rewards outpacing the income they support.

Coinbase's transaction expenses as a share of revenue. Listing its own prediction contracts gives Coinbase a way to cut the exchange fees that pushed this ratio up.

Circle's other revenue excluding ARC, and any reported payments fees. These would separate recurring customer income from token-sale income.

If balances, volumes and contract counts keep setting records while those lines shrink, the adoption story would still be running ahead of the earnings story.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.