When Binance-affiliated entities sued RedotPay’s co-founders for $472.8 million last week, the eye-catching detail was not the total—it was the math behind it. Binance arrived at that figure by valuing each of the roughly 470,000 users it alleges were diverted from Binance Card to RedotPay’s cards at a lifetime value of $925, then multiplying across the base. That single per-user number is now doing a lot of work, and it is worth asking whether it holds up.
The figure sits at the center of a contract dispute. As The Crypto Times reported, Binance affiliates Nest Trading, DistributedTechnologies, and Chaintecs Consulting Singapore filed in Hong Kong alleging RedotPay let Binance Pay funds top up its stablecoin cards outside the terms of a March 2025 agreement, diverting more than 470,000 users.
RedotPay rejects the claims and says it is “vigorously defending.” Crucially, none of the allegations have been tested in court, and the $925 is Binance’s own damages assumption—a number constructed for litigation, not an audited market value.
The question that followed online was whether $925 per user is realistic. Ryan De Souza, an APAC partnerships lead at Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs, published a widely shared thread arguing the figure is “incredibly high” against traditional fintech but more defensible against crypto-native economics.
His analysis is a useful starting point, though as an industry participant his framing is his own; the underlying benchmarks are what matter.
Benchmarking Against a Crypto Exchange
The most relevant comparison is another crypto exchange, and here the number gets support. Coinbase historically disclosed its revenue per monthly transacting user, which reached $81.67 in Q1 2025, the highest on record at the time, per its shareholder letters. Annualized, that is roughly $980 per active user per year—strikingly close to Binance’s $925 figure. Coinbase’s economics have since softened with the market: it posted a $359 million loss on falling trading revenue in Q2 2026, a reminder that crypto per-user revenue is highly cycle-dependent.
That proximity cuts both ways. It suggests $925 is a plausible estimate of what a genuinely active, high-value crypto customer generates in a single strong year, lending Binance’s number some credibility. But it also exposes the weak point: Coinbase’s ~$980 is an annual revenue figure for transacting users in a bull-market quarter, while Binance is applying $925 as a lifetime value across a large, mixed base—many of whom may transact rarely or churn quickly. Equating one active year with a whole customer lifetime is where the assumption becomes aggressive.
Benchmarking Against Fintech
Measured against traditional fintech, De Souza argues, $925 looks high. He cites annual revenue-per-user figures of roughly $191 for Robinhood, $114 for Wise, and $88 for Revolut—a fraction of the crypto number. But fintechs, he notes, tend to keep customers far longer, with relationships averaging several years and products embedded across trading, spending, and savings. Spread over those longer lifespans, he estimates actual fintech lifetime value at roughly $400–800, still below Binance’s $925.
The gap reflects a real structural difference. Crypto brokerages earn much higher margins per active year because trading fees on volatile and exotic assets dwarf the thin economics of a payments app or a stock-trading account.
What they lack is durability: crypto relationships are cyclical, and a user who is highly profitable in a bull market can go dormant for years in a bear one. Higher margin per active year and shorter relationship, the two forces pull in opposite directions, and where $925 lands depends heavily on which one an analyst weights.
Why the Number Matters Beyond the Lawsuit
The debate is more than accounting. By anchoring damages to a rigid per-user lifetime value, Binance is effectively asserting a price for retail payment customers—and signaling how much it believes control over user acquisition is worth as exchanges push into cards, savings, and lending to stretch relationships past the next cycle.
It is the same logic driving the industry’s move “upstream” into embedded finance, exemplified by Coinbase’s “Everything Exchange” push into stocks, payments, and lending: if a crypto user is worth close to $1,000, keeping them inside a proprietary ecosystem is worth fighting for, in court if necessary.
The figure also lands at a delicate moment for RedotPay, which has been preparing a US IPO that could value it above $4 billion, with JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Jefferies engaged. A large, unresolved fraud claim built on a contested user-value metric is the kind of thing that can complicate diligence and freeze a listing timeline—arguably part of the leverage the number is designed to create.
The Bottom Line
Is a crypto user worth $925? As a snapshot of one active year for a high-value exchange customer, the number is defensible and roughly matches Coinbase’s disclosed economics. As a lifetime value applied uniformly across 470,000 mixed-quality users, it is far more contestable and well above what comparable fintech relationships generate.
The most important caveat is the simplest: $925 is a litigation input, not a market-tested valuation, and a Hong Kong court, not a spreadsheet, will decide what weight it deserves. What the exercise does reveal is how the industry is starting to price the thing it now competes hardest for: the customer.
