Retail Isn’t Fueling Crypto Right Now, So The Easy Flip Cycle Is Over
Robinhood’s earnings provide a clear signal of where retail enthusiasm stands. Transaction-based revenue climbed 15% year-over-year to $776 million, fueled by options and equities trading. In contrast, cryptocurrency revenue dropped 38% to $221 million.
Retail participation in markets continues at a healthy pace, as broader trading volumes make clear. The difference now is that crypto no longer sits at the center of that activity the way it did during the peak of the cycle.
The way prices have behaved points in the same direction. Bitcoin now trades around $65,400, roughly 46% below its $122,000 all-time high. Ethereum sits near $1,915, down about 60% from its $4,830 peak. Those are drawdowns that test conviction and flush out short-term traders. Without a steady wave of new retail buyers stepping in, quick recoveries become harder to sustain.
Meanwhile, everyday investors haven’t stepped back from markets altogether.
The broader investing public is more active in traditional markets than they’ve been in years. Individual traders accounted for roughly 20% of total U.S. stock trading volume in Q3 2025 – the second-highest level on record and close to the 2021 meme-stock surge.
Before 2020, retail participation typically hovered near 15%. Meanwhile, long-only mutual funds and hedge funds each represented about 15% of trading volume last quarter, meaning individual investors now rival major institutional categories in equities.
Source: X
Crypto, however, is telling a different story. Data from CryptoQuant shows institutional Bitcoin holdings continued to expand throughout 2025, while retail holdings trended in the opposite direction.
Image source: CryptoQuant
The same cooling shows up in broader participation trends. In a latest U.S. market analysis, Outset PR found that overall crypto-related interest contracted in Q4, falling roughly 28% from the previous quarter and more than 33% between October and December. The uptick in …
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