Arcus did $5bn across 15,000 traders, which is $333,000 each

Robinhood Wallet has added Arcus as one of its routing providers for stock token spot swaps. Arcus is a decentralised exchange built by the team behind dYdX, and it published its running totals alongside the integration. The numbers are more interesting divided into each other than listed.

Four figures, and what they give when divided

• $5bn of cumulative volume since the July launch on Robinhood Chain
• 15,000 unique traders, which works out at $333,000 of volume each
• $28m of total value locked, so the capital behind it has turned over 179 times
• 190 stock tokens on the venue, up from 90 at launch
• Around $64m a day across the roughly 78 days since mid-July

The $333,000 measures cumulative volume, not a balance. Someone who round-trips $10,000 fifty times produces half a million dollars of volume while holding ten thousand. It still tells you that 15,000 accounts trade at a size and frequency far above casual retail.

Why $28m can carry $5bn

Most decentralised exchanges price a swap against a pool, so the pool has to be large enough to absorb the trade. Arcus runs a request-for-quote model instead: professional market makers compete to price each individual swap, and the winning quote fills it. The price comes from that quote, so the size of the pool stops mattering.

That explains the 179 turns. The $28m is working capital behind a quoting desk. For a user the practical difference shows up in large orders, where a pool widens the spread while competing quotes can hold it.

“The early traction reinforces what we believed from the beginning: traders want markets that are global, accessible, and always on.”

— Eddie Zhang, Arcus

Eddie Zhang, chief executive of Arcus

The size, measured against things that already exist

Two of our own counts put $5bn in proportion. AMC Entertainment, the stock at the centre of the tokenisation argument in September, has averaged $78.9m of volume a day on the regular market over the past year. Arcus at $64m a day is running at 81% of one mid-cap's tape, which is a real number for a venue three months old.

The other count goes the other way. Binance's tokenised equity product did about $118.5m in its first two months. Arcus reports roughly 42 times that over a comparable stretch. Both figures are published, neither has been reconciled against the other, and the gap is large enough that anyone quoting either should say which venue and which counting method they mean.

For users in supported jurisdictions the integration adds Arcus liquidity to the wallet's routing, makes limit orders available through the dapp browser, and makes swaps eligible for Arcus Points. Robinhood keeps several routing providers, so this adds a road.

The number to watch next is the trader count. Volume per account can keep rising on the same fifteen thousand people, which would describe a professional venue with a retail front door. If the 15,000 becomes 150,000 while volume per trader falls, the stock token market has found users rather than turnover.

Informational material, not investment advice. The volume and trader figures come from Arcus and have not been independently verified.