Moomoo is pitching a different crypto strategy for retail investors: not a bigger menu of assets, but a stronger set of tools. Albi Mema, director of crypto operations at moomoo U.S., said the bigger issue is no longer basic market access. It is the quality of access, including the data, analytics and execution standards that institutional desks have long enjoyed.
A different answer to the “everything app” race
Retail platforms have spent years trying to become one-stop financial apps, adding stocks, crypto, banking and payments to keep users inside a single ecosystem. Moomoo is taking a different angle. Mema said the next phase will not be decided by which platform lists the most assets, but by which one helps investors make better decisions across those assets. That puts its pitch slightly apart from the broader expansion seen at Robinhood, Kraken and Coinbase.
The New York-based company says it has more than 30 million global users, $156 billion in client assets and close to $1.9 trillion in annual trading volume. Through one app, users can trade stocks, options, ETFs and cryptocurrencies. The company’s stated focus is to pair low-cost trading with institutional-grade market data, analytics and investing tools for self-directed traders.
Retail demand shifts toward analytics and execution
Mema said retail investors have become more informed, more active and less satisfied with stripped-down trading apps. In his view, they want more context around decisions, stronger datasets and better tools rather than simple access alone. He described today’s retail traders as users who build positions, track volatility and think over a longer time horizon.
Moomoo highlights AI-assisted trading tools and a no-code algorithm builder that lets users scan markets for technical patterns, backtest strategies and automate trading signals. Users can also share strategies with the broader community. Mema described that setup as a collaborative trading-floor dynamic spread across more than 30 million retail participants.
Speed and slippage remain a pain point in crypto
Execution quality is a central part of the pitch. Mema said retail crypto traders often face meaningfully worse speed and slippage than institutions. Some retail orders, he said, can take hundreds of milliseconds to settle, while institutional systems may operate in tens of milliseconds or faster. In volatile markets, that gap can translate directly into worse pricing for smaller traders. Moomoo says it wants to bring institutional-level execution standards into the retail crypto experience.
Tokenization is part of the longer plan
The company is also moving deeper into tokenization. Moomoo recently joined Figure Markets’ onchain public securities initiative and partnered with Figure (FIGR) and BitGo (BTGO) on tokenized secondary market offerings. Mema said he expects a hybrid future rather than a clean break: traditional markets are still here, blockchain-native markets are growing, and the real shift is in the convergence between the two.
That framing captures Moomoo’s broader bet. Instead of competing only on product breadth, the platform is trying to attract retail traders who want stronger execution, deeper analytics and tools that can work across both traditional markets and onchain finance.