Morning Minute: Robinhood Adds Perps, Weekend Stocks, and AI Traders

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our daily news show ‘FOMO HOUR’ covering all of the top stories and market action.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors chop ahead of economic data; BTC at $83.9k
• Robinhood makes slew of announcements at Summit, including perps, weekend stock trading, agentic trading, social app and more
• CBOE may work on tokenized options contracts
• Blockchain dot com targeting $500M IPO; Kalshi raising again at $40B
• Pump leads onchain protocols in revenue again with $2.26M

🏗️ Robinhood Makes a Slew of Announcements at HOOD Summit

Robinhood used its Houston summit Tuesday night to announce more new products at once than it has in years. Crypto perpetual futures. Weekend stock trading. AI agents that place trades. Contracts on company earnings. Longer options hours and more intraday margin. All of it aimed at one group: active traders.

• Perps come to U.S. customers. Bitcoin and ether contracts will offer up to 10x leverage, with other assets starting at 3x, through Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp (not Lighter). Robinhood’s head of U.S. futures products said traders want leverage, but the company chose to start safer on smaller coins.
• Weekend stock trading. Robinhood launched round-the-clock trading in 2023, but it still stopped on weekends. Now a selection of stocks and ETFs will trade 24-7 and Saturday and Sunday through an alternative venue called Bruce ATS. That closes the last gap between stocks and crypto.
• AI agents that trade for you. Users can create an agent inside the app, pick a model from OpenAI or Anthropic, and give it its own trading account to research markets and place trades. A feature called Loops lets users set standing instructions so the agent acts on its own when conditions are met. More than 150,000 agent accounts already exist from when Robinhood opened its systems to outside AI earlier this year.
• Earnings contracts. Through Cboe, users will be able to trade on whether a company hits a specific number—revenue, earnings per share, or in Apple’s case, iPhone sales.
• Social trading app. Robinhood announced its Robinhood Social app is now live inside their main app, throwing its hat in the ring alongside Fomo and Pump in the hottest new niche in onchain trading.

Robinhood’s product VP described the destination as one account where you sell stocks, buy crypto, sell crypto, and trade prediction markets without thinking about which one you’re in. It’s the definition of the “everything app.”

Now we’ll see which one of these products becomes Robinhood’s breakout…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are mostly flat; BTC -0.4% at $83.9k; ETH -1% at $2,700; SOL even at $120; HYPE -2% at $86.60; ZEC +1% at $1,427
• Top alt movers include QNT (+23%), ZRO (+10%), NEAR (+9%) and PUMP (+4%).
• Oil -1% at $91; Gold +0.75% at $4,211
• Stock futures are slightly red ahead of key economic data; DOW -0.15%, Nasdaq -0.3%
• Bitcoin is up 7.33% in September, narrowly ahead of 2024’s 7.29% for the best September on record; it needs to close above roughly $83,600 to hold the title
• Cboe and S&P Dow Jones extended their S&P 500 options deal through 2051 and said they may work on tokenized options contracts
• Blockchain.com is targeting a $500 million IPO this year at a valuation of up to $6 billion, after filing confidentially with the SEC earlier in the year
• Aztec brought back zk.money to Ethereum, a wallet that hides payment amounts, balances, and recipients using readable names like bob.zk.money
• Zcash developers started moving Tachyon code into the software behind its faster private payments, tying the November upgrade to its larger scaling plan
• HSBC named its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin RedCoin, with a launch planned before year-end through its PayMe app and mobile bank; starts with person-to-person and merchant payments, then expands to corporate use
• The Bitget attacker moved about $3.9 million of stolen Zcash into the coin’s private pool Wednesday morning, where senders, recipients, and amounts are hidden

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $66M in net inflows on Tuesday; the ETH ETFs saw $3M in outflows and Solana had $5M in inflows
• Bitwise launched the first U.S. spot NEAR ETF, trading on NYSE Arca under NRR with a 0.75% fee, waived on the first $500 million for three months. The fund stakes its tokens and keeps about a third of the rewards.

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were slightly green; DOGE even, SHIB even, PEPE +2%, PENGU +6%, TRUMP +2%, SPX +3%, BONK +10%
• Robinhood chain leaders were mostly red after no meme mentions at RH Summit day 1; Pons +6% to $384M; AI -11% at $186M; Cashcat -2% at $172M; Hookr +43% and VRAX +300x were top movers
• Solana top movers were led by SI +100%, Arthur +40x and Stonk +20%; Ansem -10% to $140M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mixed; Punks -1% at 33.49 ETH, BAYC -1% at 6.14 ETH, Pudgy +3% at 3.29 ETH
• Cashcats (+43%) and Milady (+12%) led top movers