From Crypto Wallet to U.S. Active Trader: eToro's TradeZero Pivot Defines Q2

Solid +9% net contribution growth masks a strategic reorientation toward the U.S. active-trader segment, AI agents, and 24/7 IPO access.

ETOR · Earnings Call · 2026-08-11

From crypto wallet to U.S. active trading

Just three months after closing the Zengo crypto-wallet acquisition, eToro announced a very different deal: TradeZero, a U.S. active-trader broker with self-clearing infrastructure, options, futures and shorting, for up to $230M. The keyword shift from one quarter to the next is stark — in 20262 the top themes were Agent Portfolio, Zengo, and trade crypto; in 20263 it is active trader, acquisition of TradeZero, Pro Investors, and RIA license. Copy trading, the #1 keyword in 20254, fell off the top tier entirely. That is a pivot, not a tweak. The financials underscore resilience rather than a broken model: net contribution +9% YoY to $229M, adjusted EBITDA +9% to $78M, funded accounts +18% to 4.28M, and AUA +10% to $19B. But the forward story is about the U.S.

...a very big focus on scaling the capabilities of the etoro offering in the U.S. specifically, enabling a lot of the features that are very popular of etoro outside the U.S., here in the U.S., for example, leverage trading, margin trading as well as futures... and shorting capabilities, which are actually very unique to TradeZero's technology and patents.
Jonathan Assia, CEO · 2026-08-11

This is a direct reversal of the prior quarter's crypto-first M&A story. In May, Yoni framed Zengo as the vehicle into DeFi; now the center of gravity is a traditional U.S. broker-dealer. The RIA license — confirmed as received — unlocks Smart Portfolios and, eventually, a compensated Pro Investor marketplace in the U.S. Combined, these complete a U.S. product map that was previously gated by regulation.

The AI layer: agents as the growth engine

Q2 wasn't only about M&A. The 'financial superapp' thesis rests on AI agents. Yoni described rewriting the entire app with AI — roughly 500 man-years of work compressed — with Tori, the AI agent, front and center, and the App Store now at 75+ third-party apps. The agentic model lets users define a dedicated portfolio, capital allocation, and risk envelope, then authorize an AI to trade within it. In the prior call he cited "north of 500,000 trades" in the first three weeks; now he reports official Grok and Claude connectors, letting a user authorize an agent directly from the model's own interface: “You can actually create a scheduled task, an autonomous agent in Grok that looks at the market, that explores the market and automatically trades in your account... the users can define their permissions of the MCP, so you can decide that the connector... is, for example, only for read.” — Jonathan Assia, CEO · 2026-08-11 This is riding a genuine global wave — "Agentic AI offering" and "Agent stack" appear across the market's keyword sets — but eToro's execution is company-specific: monetization via higher velocity in smaller-size trades, deliberately patterned on copy trading rather than whole-account automation.

Crypto cyclicality, and the July wobble

The second quarter also showcased the multi-asset hedge: as users rotated from crypto into commodities and then equities, capital-markets net trading contribution rose 25% YoY. Crypto itself was softer ($11M, down YoY, including a $2M valuation hit on corporate holdings). July was the stress test — AUA fell 5% YoY on crypto pricing and the number of trades went flat. The stock traded down on that headline. Meron pointed to early-August improvement: “...we've already seen some improvements coming up in the first 10 days of August to date. So that's a good sign that July might have been the bottom.” — Meron Shani, CFO · 2026-08-11 Yoni framed it as cycle #4: “The cycles look remarkably the same where you have the peak post halving, then you have a correction... I believe this cycle will eventually look like previous cycles in the past.” — Jonathan Assia, CEO · 2026-08-11 The SpaceX IPO demonstrated the platform's reach — over 200,000 customers traded $1.7B of volumes in SpaceX shares and derivatives, with pre-IPO perpetuals, retail IPO distribution in the U.K., and 24/7 trading afterward. That playbook — derivatives ahead of the IPO, retail allocation, always-on markets — is exactly what TradeZero's futures and options rails will extend in the U.S.

The takeaway

What changed, in short: eToro is no longer the crypto-and-copy-trading story of 2024-2025. The Zengo-to-TradeZero arc is the tell — from a crypto wallet to a U.S. active-trader consolidator with an AI-native superapp. Execution risk is real ($230M, self-clearing, U.S. regulation), but the strategic direction is coherent and the Q2 numbers fund it. The market's initial skepticism around July crypto weakness looks like a trailing indicator of a story that has already moved on.