MarketsAltcoins
|7 min ReadWhy Social Trading Is Becoming the New Market Infrastructure
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
From Meme Coins to Market Architecture
Achi, the Shiba Inu behind the dogwifhat meme, stood on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in January 2025. A year earlier, this Solana-based token was a joke. Now it symbolized something real — the rise of social trading as a new layer of market infrastructure.
When Benchmark led a $17 million Series A for Fomo in November 2025, it was not betting on another trading app. It was betting on community. Benchmark’s Chetan Puttagunta joined Fomo’s board, signaling that the Valley’s most selective firm saw social trading as essential to the future of retail investing.
The bet reflected a shift. Brokerages handle execution. Social trading handles discovery, conversation, and verification. Together, they form the new financial stack.
The Blossom Blueprint: Friction Builds Trust
Blossom Social team and community in front of Nasdaq.
Blossom Social’s CEO Maxwell Nicholson did something counterintuitive. He forced every user to link a brokerage account before joining. Most startups remove friction. Nicholson made it mandatory. His reason was simple: authenticity.
Launched in 2021 during the GameStop mania, Blossom verified what users actually held. No anonymous claims, no fake screenshots. Brokerage-linked accounts turned opinions into data.
It worked. Blossom now counts 500,000 users with 100,000 verified portfolios totaling $4 billion in assets. Half sits in ETFs, led by the S&P 500. The friction created a culture of transparency — a community of long-term investors instead of gamblers.
That culture became a business. Revenue rose from 1.1 million in 2024 and is tracking $4 million this year. Seventy-five percent comes from ETF partnerships. State Street, VanEck, and Global X all pay Blossom to understand what retail investors actually buy, not what they say they buy. In total, 25 fund providers work with the platform.
Blossom’s users aren’t chasing memes. They’re sharing verified portfolios and creating a real-time dataset of retail money flows. ETF issuers treat it as infrastructure, not entertainment.
Different Audiences, Different Platforms
Kevin Xu, founder of AfterHour and Alpha Ai.
Not all retail traders are the same. Kevin Xu built AfterHour for the WallStreetBets crowd. He turned 8 million in the meme-stock era by posting every move publicly. His new platform lets users verify their trades under pseudonyms and show full dollar positions. Think of it as Twitch for traders. AfterHour raised 500 million in verified portfolios and millions of shared trading signals.
Fomo, by contrast, chases crypto natives who live on Solana, Ethereum, and Base. Founders Paul Erlanger and Se Yong Park landed 140 angels including Polygon’s Marc Boiron, Solana’s Raj Gokal, and Balaji Srinivasan. Benchmark joined after seeing their growth.
The team behind the Fomo app that raised from Benchmark.
Fomo’s pitch is access to every token on any chain, with social feeds showing what friends are trading. The app absorbs gas fees, charges 0.5% per trade, and supports Apple Pay for instant onboarding. By September 2025, it was clearing 40 million a day and earning $150,000 daily in fees.
Each platform has its tribe. Blossom’s audience talks ETFs and dividends. AfterHour thrives on adrenaline and transparency. Fomo runs 24/7 for the crypto-obsessed. None try to serve everyone. Each builds for one mindset — and that focus is the moat.
Robinhood Joins the Race
Robinhood founders Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev after the IPO in New York.
In September 2025, Robinhood launched “Robinhood Social.” CEO Vlad Tenev called it part of the “financial superapp.” Users can see verified trades, follow friends, view P&L, and even track politicians and hedge funds. The rollout was invitation-only. That alone proved how seriously Robinhood takes the shift.
With 24 million funded accounts, Robinhood has reach. But features like zero commissions, mobile trading, and fractional shares are now standard. Community is the next battleground. If users discuss and discover trades elsewhere, Robinhood risks becoming just the execution layer.
Social trading keeps users locked in by linking money with conversation. You’re not just trading stocks — you’re trading with your network watching.
Media, Markets, and the New Workflow
Howard Lindzon, founder of StockTwits, speaking at Bloomberg Empowered Entrepreneur Summit.
Howard Lindzon saw it early. He built StockTwits in 2008 as a real-time feed for traders. Today it has 6 million users. He calls it the “degenerate economy index,” half-joking, fully accurate.
Social trading merges media and execution. Bloomberg terminals do it for professionals. StockTwits, Blossom, AfterHour, and Fomo do it for everyone else. Users can read, react, and trade in one place. The conversation is the market.
Blossom sells ETF exposure the way CNBC sells ads — except the data is verified. AfterHour’s push alerts when your favorite trader buys a stock create instant engagement. Fomo’s feed reveals which crypto tokens are heating up before they hit headlines.
Younger investors don’t wait for TV anchors. They trade in real time, from their phones, in communities that feel alive. These platforms turned market talk into market infrastructure.
Data Becomes the Product
Blossom’s 1,400-person Toronto event at Rogers Centre.
The most valuable product in social trading isn’t content. It’s data.
Blossom’s $4 billion in linked assets reveals what retail investors actually hold. ETF flows, dividend trends, and crypto ETF adoption — all verified, not surveyed. Providers pay to know where retail money moves.
AfterHour’s $500 million in connected portfolios shows what the WallStreetBets crowd really trades. Fomo’s flow data exposes which tokens survive hype cycles. Together, they build a map of the retail market invisible to institutions.
These datasets are new forms of market intelligence — Bloomberg terminals for the people.
The Future: A Permanent Social Layer
Social trading isn’t a fad. It’s the next layer of the financial stack. APIs like SnapTrade and Plaid made verified portfolio linking possible. Retail investors who entered markets in 2021 never left. They just needed infrastructure built for their behavior.
Blossom, AfterHour, and Fomo don’t need to become brokerages. They connect to all of them. They are the layer above — where investors talk, share, and decide. Revenue growth and engagement metrics prove sustainability. Regulation is favorable because these platforms don’t custody assets. They host conversation and insight.
The winners will be those who know their tribe. Dividend investors, meme-stock traders, crypto natives — each gets its own home. Benchmark’s bet on Fomo confirms this: the future of markets is social, specialized, and unstoppable.
Social trading isn’t replacing Wall Street. It’s building on top of it. And everybody knows it.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.