30M users, $156B assets: moomoo's director says retail crypto traders need institutional execution and analytics, not just broader asset access. The bet pressures Coinbase and Robinhood.
Moomoo is betting that the next competitive frontier in retail crypto is not asset breadth but tooling depth. Albi Mema, director of crypto operations at moomoo U.S., laid out the thesis in a CoinDesk interview: retail investors want institutional-grade analytics, faster execution and strategy-building tools – not just another crypto venue.
Mema said the platform now serves 30 million global users, holds $156 billion in client assets and handles nearly $1.9 trillion in annual trading volume. Those numbers give moomoo the scale to invest in execution infrastructure that most retail platforms lack.
The thesis arrives at a moment when brokerages across both crypto and traditional finance are racing toward the one-stop shop model. Robinhood (HOOD), Kraken and Coinbase (COIN) have all expanded beyond their original products, blending equities, derivatives, payments and digital assets. Mema argues moomoo’s differentiator is not aggregation alone – it is the depth of tooling layered on top of it.
“The next generation of retail investors won’t be defined by who offers the most assets,” Mema said. “It will be about who helps investors make the best decisions across those assets.”
Mema described a market shift in how retail investors interact with crypto. A decade ago the problem was access – getting a brokerage account that allowed crypto trading. Now the problem is quality of access.
“We want to democratize access to the best tools that have historically only been available to institutional investors,” he said. “A decade ago the issue was access. Now it’s the quality of access.”
Today’s retail investors are “more informed, more engaged, and more demanding than ever,” Mema added. “They do not just want access to markets, they want better data, better tools, better education, and more context around the decisions they make.”
Moomoo is addressing that demand with a no-code algorithm builder that allows users to scan markets for technical patterns, backtest strategies and automate trading signals. Traders can also share strategies with the wider community, creating what Mema described as a collaborative “trading floor” dynamic for over 30 million retail participants.
Moomoo’s financial footprint is large enough to support institutional-grade infrastructure. The New York-based firm reports 30 million global users, $156 billion in client assets and nearly $1.9 trillion in annual trading volume. Those figures imply a platform with deep liquidity, which is a prerequisite for building execution systems that rival those of banks and hedge funds.
Mema identified a structural problem in crypto markets: retail traders often experience significantly worse execution speeds and slippage than institutions. He said some retail orders take hundreds of milliseconds to settle, while institutional systems operate in tens of milliseconds or faster.
“If you’re getting rinsed on slippage, that puts you at a disadvantage as a crypto user,” he said. “We are bringing institutional-level execution to retail.”
The gap is rooted in order-routing infrastructure. Institutional systems use direct market access and co-located servers to minimize latency. Retail platforms typically batch orders or route through less efficient liquidity pools. Moomoo’s approach is to integrate institutional execution directly into its retail app, reducing slippage and improving fill rates.
Moomoo’s no-code tool lets users build trading strategies without programming. The platform supports technical pattern scanning, backtesting and automated signal execution. Traders can publish strategies for others to copy or modify, creating a user-generated library of approaches.
Mema sees this as a way to flatten the information asymmetry between retail and institutional traders. Retail participants can now test a mean-reversion strategy on BTC or run a volatility scan on altcoin pairs using the same analytical firepower that a quant desk would use.
AlphaScala’s proprietary scoring system assigns Coinbase (COIN) a score of 26 out of 100 with a label of Weak and Robinhood (HOOD) a score of 47 out of 100 with a label of Mixed. Both stocks sit in the Financials sector. The scores reflect each company’s current execution quality, tooling depth and market positioning relative to peers.
Moomoo, as a private company, does not have a public score. Its strategy directly challenges the value proposition of both COIN and HOOD – and of Kraken and other retail-focused platforms. If moomoo succeeds in attracting sophisticated traders, incumbents may need to accelerate their own tooling investments.
Robinhood has added crypto trading, banking and retirement accounts. Coinbase has expanded into derivatives, staking and its own layer-2 network. Kraken offers spot, futures and custody. All three are pursuing aggregation as the primary value driver.
Moomoo’s counter-argument is that aggregation without tooling depth produces mediocre user experiences. A retail trader who can buy 200 coins on an exchange will still lose money if every trade suffers 0.3% slippage because the platform routes orders poorly. The platform that solves execution quality first may capture the most active users, even if its asset list is narrower.
Moomoo recently joined Figure Markets’ onchain public securities initiative and partnered with Figure (FIGR) and BitGo (BTGO) on tokenized secondary market offerings. These moves signal that moomoo sees tokenization as a key growth area, bridging traditional capital markets with blockchain-native assets.
Figure Markets is building an onchain exchange for securities, while BitGo is a leading digital asset custodian. Together, they give moomoo a foothold in the market for tokenized equities, bonds and real-world assets.
“We think the future is hybrid. Traditional markets are not disappearing. Blockchain-native markets are not replacing everything tomorrow,” Mema said. “The two are starting to converge, and platforms that can bridge those worlds responsibly will be well positioned.”
That positioning is forward-looking. Major asset managers such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have launched tokenized funds. Regulators in Asia and Europe are drafting frameworks for tokenized securities. Moomoo’s partnerships give it an early entry point into this market, potentially allowing retail users to trade tokenized stocks and bonds alongside crypto.
Key insight: The retail execution gap is structural, not incidental. Platforms that fix it may capture the high-velocity traders who generate the majority of transaction revenue.
The immediate catalyst to watch is how Robinhood, Coinbase and Kraken respond. If any of them launch a no-code algorithm builder or advertise institutional-level execution, the competitive landscape will shift. If they stay focused on asset aggregation, moomoo may carve out a defensible niche.
For retail crypto traders, the moomoo strategy creates a concrete evaluation framework. When choosing a platform, ask these questions:
Platforms that cannot answer those questions may be losing users to moomoo without realizing it.
Confirmation: Moomoo shows measurable improvements in retail fill rates, or a competitor launches a direct response product.
Weakening: Moomoo fails to attract a critical mass of active traders, or the majority of retail users continue to prioritize asset selection over execution quality.
For now, moomoo is making a clear bet: the retail investor who has outgrown basic trading apps is the future of the industry. “Retail investors are building positions, measuring volatility and thinking long term,” Mema said. “They’re trading alongside some of the best and brightest.” The question is whether the rest of the market agrees enough to change its own product roadmap.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.