Robinhood at To Catch A Token: Expanding Crypto Horizons

On Monday, 30 June 2025, Robinhood Markets Inc (NASDAQ:HOOD) unveiled its ambitious plans at the "Robinhood Presents: To Catch A Token" conference. The event highlighted the company’s strategic expansion into the European crypto market, alongside a series of innovative product launches. While the expansion holds promise for democratizing financial services, it also poses challenges in navigating complex regulatory landscapes.

Key Takeaways

• Robinhood announced the full rollout of its crypto services across the EU and EEA, including the UK.
• The introduction of perpetual futures trading in Europe is set to begin this summer, offering up to 3x leverage.
• Robinhood unveiled the Robinhood Chain, a blockchain focused on real-world assets.
• Stock tokens for US stocks and ETFs are now available for European customers, with zero commission trading.
• An airdrop of SpaceX and OpenAI stock tokens was offered to users of the Robinhood EU app.

Operational Updates

• Robinhood Crypto Expansion: Now available in 31 countries, expanding from a previous six-country rollout.
• Perpetual Futures Trading: Launching in the EU with initial 3x leverage, featuring user-friendly tools for managing profits and losses.
• Stock Tokens: European customers can trade tokenized US stocks and ETFs with a 0.10% FX conversion fee. Dividends and stock splits are directly credited.
• Robinhood Chain: A blockchain optimized for real-world assets, aiming to integrate traditional finance with crypto technology.

US Product Updates

• Robinhood Legend: Crypto trading is now available on the desktop platform, with advanced chart features.
• Smart Exchange Routing: This feature ensures the best price across multiple exchanges for crypto trades.
• Staking and Crypto Fee Tiers: Staking is available for Ethereum and Solana, with competitive APYs. Fee tiers offer lower rates based on trading volume.
• AI Investing Assistant (Cortex): Soon available for Gold customers, offering insights and trends in the crypto market.

Future Outlook

• Robinhood plans to bring US features to the EU app, enhancing accessibility and trading options.
• The company is working on tokenizing private company stocks, potentially including SpaceX and OpenAI.
• An upcoming Hood Summit in September promises further announcements and developments.

Important Quotes

• Vlad Tenev, CEO: "Crypto is much more than a speculative asset. It has the potential to become the backbone of the global financial system."
• Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto: "I want to make [crypto] less complex and more accessible to more people."
• Tanya Denisova, COO: "Introducing the Robinhood chain... to carry the entire traditional financial system into the future."

In conclusion, Robinhood’s strategic moves reflect its commitment to expanding and innovating within the global financial landscape. For a detailed account, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Robinhood Presents: To Catch A Token:

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Alright. Welcome to the French Riviera and the historic Chateau De La Croix Des Gardes. It’s hot out here, isn’t it? You guys staying cool? Alright.

Don’t worry. You can unbutton a little bit. This is probably the most I can do. Thank you for coming to our first ever crypto keynote and our first big event in Europe. You’ll find out how these pieces fit together in just a moment.

It’s been an exciting year for this community. How many of you are feeling more optimistic than ever about the future of crypto? Great. Me too. And we’ve survived some dark times, haven’t we?

But finally, clear regulations are coming into effect in the European Union. This means we now have the clarity to unleash many of the financial innovations that crypto makes possible. Meanwhile, The US, after years of attempting to obliterate the crypto industry, is finally ready to catch up to the rest of the world. We, as an industry, find ourselves now at an important precipice. We have a chance to prove to the world what we believed all along, that crypto is much more than a speculative asset.

It has the potential to become the backbone of the global financial system. So what we’re hoping to do today, two things to turn this from a possibility to an inevitability. One, cross that divide by rolling out new products for our US and EU customers, products that go beyond Bitcoin and Meme Coins and show fundamental utility. And two, give the crypto community outside the EU a glimpse of the better future that’s possible when crypto and traditional financial services fully merge. Here to join me in doing this is Tanya Denisova, the chief operating officer of Robinhood Crypto.

Welcome her up. Thank you for being here, Tanya.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Thanks for having me.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: You’ve been in crypto now for how many years?

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: I got into crypto nine years ago when I stumbled upon a job offer for a crypto company I’d never heard of before. I googled it and fell down a rabbit hole learning about Bitcoin. I thought it was just the coolest thing I’d ever heard of.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: A true believer. Did you buy Bitcoin at that time?

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Of course, I did, Lad.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: And did you sell it?

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Unfortunately, I did sell some of it.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: That’s too bad. And we also have Johan Kirbhat, our head of Robinhood Crypto. Hey.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Hey, Tania. Hey, Vlad. Hey, Johan. Thanks for having me here. And since I know you’re going to ask, I got into crypto fifteen years ago.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Actually, I wasn’t going to ask, but thanks for telling me. Fifteen years? Really? That’s a long time, Johan. Why are you working for me?

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Well, I kind of did it, Tanya. And when Bitcoin hated the law, I thought there is no way this goes any higher, so I saw it all. But, you know, really, I’m basically an engineer. So the reason I’m here is I believe in this technology, and I wanna make it less complex and more accessible to more people. So what do I mean by that?

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: We’re ready to hear it, John.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Sorry. I got carried away. But it can really be viewed in two ways. One is as a tradable assets, you know, like Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, I think you all know that here. The other piece is as

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: a fundamental piece of technology that could reshape financial services. And I think this second idea is really under explored. Surprisingly, I actually agree with everything you just said, and that reveals a big question that I’ve been wrestling with for much of the past two years. And that question is, what would Robinhood look like if it was rebuilt from the ground up entirely on crypto technology? And that’s exactly what we’ll be showing you today.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Well, before we get to that, one thing we noticed while preparing this keynote is that while we’re all Americans, all of us were also born here in Europe. I moved from Saint Petersburg to The US when I was two years old.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: And I’ve talked about growing up in Bulgaria so much that they make memes about it, like this one.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And I’m actually from right here, from Cannes. I lived here for ten years and used to skate on the crosses, bothering all the tourists like most of you guys. Unfortunately, there

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: is no meme about it. Not yet anyway. So the reason we’re telling you all this is because we’re excited to be in Europe. You may be used to Robinhood talking about things in The US, but our long term goal has always been to democratize finance all around the world. And what we’re gonna show you today is a significant step towards that.

And we wanted to do it in a place where Johan felt most comfortable and where people would understand his accent. That’s very

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: nice of you, Vlad. By the way, can you repeat the name of this place again?

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: I was looking at the French people and they nodded affirmatively, so but touche. The point of today, hundreds of millions of people all over Europe are about to get access to a whole new Robinhood for the very first time.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Until an hour ago, Robinhood was only fully rolled out in six countries worldwide. There’s the Robinhood crypto app in Italy, Spain, Poland, and Lithuania. And of course, in The US and UK, there’s our brokerage app. And that’s it.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: However, starting today, I’m excited to announce that Robinhood crypto will now be available in these countries as well. France, of course. Let’s see if we can get the next one. Someone. Germany.

And what about this one? Anyone know what country this is from? Vlad maybe?

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Sounds very much like the anthem I heard every day in school when I was a young boy in Bulgaria.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Okay, guys. No one came here to hear every country’s national anthem one by one. To cut to the chase, we are now live across the entire EU and EEA. So altogether with The UK, Robinhood is accessible in a total of 31 countries on this continent alone.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: 31 amazing countries. And some of the regulators and policymakers who made this possible are actually in the audience tonight. Let’s give them a round of applause for their support. Thanks for making this possible. I should also add that we aren’t just expanding Robinhood crypto to more countries.

No. We’re significantly changing what Robinhood does and offers. And I’m not gonna ruin it for you all tonight, and hopefully, Tanya won’t. We’ll be getting into

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: all of these new features in great detail. So for everyone watching in the EU right now, Rabbit Node is now fully rolled out and available in the App Store and Google Play. So you can download it now or update your app if you’re already a user. You might notice a slight change in the name of the app, and the reason for that is going to become clear over the course of the evening.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: And you may want to take a moment to download it now because there might be a surprise coming at the end for those who are on the app.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: In America, we call that foreshadowing, and I’ll just jump in and add a third reason to download it, because there’s a whole new asset class coming to the EU app. Introducing perpetual futures. It’s exciting, isn’t it? We we call this it’s like a little appetizer to the to the main course. I guess.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Yes.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Traditionally, perpetual futures have had clunky, overly complicated interfaces, particularly on mobile. So we’ve spent a lot of time refining and chiseling, and I believe we’ve crafted perhaps the finest perps experience, the finest perps UX on mobile, reducing the complexity but without sacrificing the power or speed. Now advanced traders will be able to trade perps on the go, not just stuck at their desk. So I’ll step to the side here and I’ll let Tania and Johan walk you through what the new experience will look like. Thanks Vlad.

So I’ve traded perbs on different platform and one thing I’ve always found frustrating is how complicated it is to set your orders correctly and modify them.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Yeah. Speaking personally, after having seen some of the interfaces, I would have no idea where to even begin figuring out how to place an order.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And and I get it, Tanya. You know, I actually counted how many tabs and inputs it takes to place an order, and it’s more than 20. So when we talked to our most active traders, we really got the feeling that they hated what they currently use but had no other choice. So when we designed perpetual features on Robinhood, we worked to make it as seamless as possible, much more intuitive and less frustrating.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Now before we get started, by a show of hands, how many people here have actually traded perps? Okay. Looks looks like a lot of you have never traded them before. So for those who don’t know, you can just sort of break down the name. So first of all, it’s basically a future where you say the price is going to be x, y, or z, and it’s perpetual.

Meaning that they don’t have an expiration date, so you don’t need to constantly monitor the dates of your different contracts. Now like CryptoSpot, you can go long, but what’s different here is you can also short the asset.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And obviously, something that is very popular with Perks is to use leverage, enabling advanced trader to increase their exposure with less capital. So on one hand, it’s a powerful institutional grade financial instrument, but unfortunately, most of the time when you want to trade perps, you are being attacked with a screen that looks like my old TI-eighty three calculator in high school.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: So this is why I don’t trade perbs, but that ends today. Not just for me, but hopefully for a lot of you as well. Let’s show you how it works. As you can see on the screen, this is the ETH page in the Robinhood EU app.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Okay. Ethereum is pretty stable at 2,000. So what do you all think? Is ETH going to go up or down in the next few days? All right.

We have a lot of experts in room. Mom, what do you think? Alright. I think we can go bullies.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Alright. Alright. Let’s do it. Let’s be long. They can probably figure out what you need to do here to trade perpetuals instead of spot.

You just stop on the card and you’re now on the perpetuals page for ETH. So let’s place a long ETH order. As we’re queuing this, we can clearly see how much margin is available and move the slider left to right to choose the order size. Currently, customers can select up to three x leverage, but in the future, we plan to expand the options for more advanced customers.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And what’s really great is you can easily choose to share your margin across all your position or just isolate it, with a single type. You get to decide the details of your strategy.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: And actually, my favorite feature is how you can set profit and loss on the order. This is really cool and changed the whole experience for me. So we took the innovative ladder that our team designed for futures in The US and we made our own profit and loss ladder. So can track the price of ETH moving in real time and decide when to take profit by moving the slider here, let’s say about 10%, and easily set up a stop loss to help protect your capital, let’s say below 5%. Well, it’s ETH, so maybe 8%.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And we heard from our customers that they didn’t like having to constantly type and update their take profit and stop loss, and it was difficult to do it on a mobile phone. So we made it possible for you to easily change your stop loss with just the swipe of a finger.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: So it’s incredibly intuitive and easy. And once your orders are placed, you can access them easily through your position hubs and see them all in one place to act on them.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And as we announced a few weeks ago, we closed our acquisition of Bitstamp, the longest continually running crypto exchange in the world. And now Bitstamp is the engine powering perpetual futures. Bitstamp is making possible a lot of other things to help execute the larger crypto vision that Vlad mentioned earlier, like what you see on the screen. So we are looking forward to BitStamp becoming a foundation of a brand new age global no, sorry.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: A brand new global crypto age for Robinhood. Is my face melting yet? You you surprised me. Okay. Thank you, Johan and Tanya.

This has already been a huge unlock for us. In the EU, perpetual futures trading will start rolling out later this summer. So if you’re an advanced trader, it’s a great time to get familiar with the incredible interface Tania and Johan just showed you. And by the way, when are perps coming to

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: The US? So, obviously, the technology is here and you just saw it. It’s all on the Robinhood platform. If and when the CFTC approves the launch of Crypto Perps, we’ll be ready. And by the way, we also introduced micro futures on Bitcoin, Solana and XRP, and long dated futures are coming soon.

But in the meantime, we have a lot of new products to talk about for The US.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Good transition. I like the optimism. I’d like to see more of that around the office, by the way.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Thanks, Vlad. I will work on it for you.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Alright, guys. Let’s get into some of the features we’ve been working on specifically for our US customers. There are a lot of them to cover. It’s been a busy year, and we’ve been taking action on some of your biggest requests.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: True. We have some major upgrades to announce for our active traders. First of all, as some of you may have seen already, crypto is now available on Robinhood Legend, which is our new state of the art desktop platform. And some of the things people really love about it are the customized indicators and the ability to trade directly from the chart.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And because it’s given our traders such an advantage, some of them started asking, when is Legend coming to mobile? And we were a bit unclear about what they meant initially until we started talking to customers and it turns out what they really wanted were the powerful charts and indicator on the mobile interface that they know and love. So voila, here they are. Advanced charts are now here for equities and will be coming later this summer for crypto at no additional cost. We think this will be by far the best charting you can get on your phone.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: And our next update is something that will reward our most active users. Smart exchange routing finds the best available price across multiple partner exchanges. That makes it possible for us to provide crypto fee tiers so that your rate goes down as the amount you trade thus goes up. This is something our most active crypto traders have been very excited about, and the numbers you see on the screen are based on your rolling thirty day volume. Most importantly, it’s rolling out now and will soon be available on our trading API as well.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: And you pay only 10 bps with 5,000,000 plus in volume, all blended, no maker taker. These rates are fantastic. And you know,

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: I checked, unfortunately, you don’t qualify for this rate, but you actually could use another feature. Starting now, Robinhood is the only major platform in The U. S. Where you can choose exactly which specific crypto holding you’re selling when you’re trading, allowing you greater management of your capital gains and losses. Profit is really only profit after you paid your taxes, so having this ability is really going to be useful.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: For those of you with paper hands like Johan here, this is gonna be especially helpful.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: He’s just harvesting his losses.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Sure he is. Sure he is.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: So another exciting addition to our US app is our AI investing assistant, Cortex, which will soon be available for crypto for our gold customers. Cortex brings together the highest quality market data, trends, news, and company earnings with the goal of giving you all the market insights you need right at your fingertips. So from now on, if you’re wondering why your favorite crypto is going up or down or sideways, Cortex will give you the context of all the events that happened recently on the crypto detail page of the token you’re interested in.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And I’m not sure if you have tried a Robinhood Gold credit card yet. It very quickly became my number one card in my wallet. To recap one of its main benefit, you get cash back for every category no matter what your net worth is. The very annoying thing though is that I don’t want cash back. I want more crypto.

So later this year, we’ll be launching crypto redemption where customers can actually automatically purchase their favorite token using the regular gold card or one of our brand new crypto card design right here.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: I like the Ethereum card for me.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: You’re just sucking up to the ETH maxies in the audience, aren’t you?

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: I will not confirm or deny that. Now as Vlad mentioned, all this is landing in The US first. However, we’re looking to bring all these features to the EU app in the future as well.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Finally, one of our most popular features in the EU app has actually been missing in The US, and this has been one of the main recurring requests from our customers. So you’ll be happy to hear that starting today, staking, Yes Staking, is now available in The US. Now before we get into the details, I wanna talk a little bit about staking and why it matters. Wax poetic, if you will. Wax sound, Vlad?

So one of the things that makes crypto so robust is that there’s no central authority, and the transactions are maintained by a distributed network that’s open and available to all. And part of what makes this so compelling is that anyone is able to participate in maintaining the network. You are the network. So staking is not just about earning rewards, although that’s very nice. It’s also about doing our part individually and collectively to secure this amazing infrastructure that we’re all helping to build.

And now it’s easier than ever to do so on Robinhood. We’re starting with Ethereum and Solana staking, and we have some of the best APYs in the market. Voila. Here they are.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Also, to help you get more to stake, we currently have a deposit boost running for crypto season. The current offer has a deposit goal that the community needs to reach in order to receive a 2% boost. But to end crypto week on an even more positive note, we’re removing that minimum.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: So for both our EU and US customers, if you deposit crypto before July 7, we’ll boost that amount by 2% with no deposit goal to it and no limit to how much you can earn. And don’t worry, if you already deposited as part of this promotion, you will get the 2%. Anyway, that was our U. S. Update.

Let’s zoom out a bit now and get into one of

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: the most exciting application of crypto today, one that will fundamentally redefine what’s tradable and where it’s traded. You may have already guessed our next update. Yes. Now is the time when we get into tokenization. So I believe that tokenization is gonna open the door to a massive trading revolution, making it possible to own or even fractionally own all kinds of real world assets and financial instruments that were never accessible or tradable by most people before.

Now there’s been a lot of talk about this for years, including from me and more recently from some of our competitors, but not a lot of action. Not a lot of action. Well, that ends today, literally right now. Because over the past year, Johan, Tanya, and the rest of the crypto team have been working very hard to make this a reality. Now the big question we faced was, what shall we tokenize first?

So we asked ourselves, what about bonds? Should we tokenize some bonds? What do you all think? Okay. Not a lot of excitement about that, I see.

How about mutual funds? Mutual funds would be a great thing to tokenize. Very, very cool. Maybe private credit? Whoo.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: Private credit.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Let’s go. Carbon credits. Private credit. Okay. How about tokenized Bitcoin?

Okay. Yes. That was a trick question. Just wanted to make sure everyone was still paying attention. As we got to thinking about what to tokenize, we saw an opportunity not to just do this with an asset class that we understood very well because we pioneered commission free trading in it, but also to solve the pain point that we saw from our European customers, which is while they love crypto, they really want exposure to US stocks as well.

So we’re really excited to announce that it is now possible for our European customers to get exposure to hundreds of major US stocks like Apple, Nvidia, and Amazon in addition to ETFs in tokenized form all on chain with thousands more coming by the end of the year. Introducing stock tokens on Robinhood. Now stock tokens are a bit of a technically complex trading product, but we’ve worked hard to make the experience as intuitive as possible for our eligible traders. In large part, the crypto technology powering all this lies under the hood, and we’ll be lifting that hood up for you a little bit later. In the meantime, I wanna introduce Song Lee, who’s our head of product for crypto, to show you what trading stock tokens is gonna look like.

Song?

Song Lee, Head of Product for Crypto, Robinhood: Thanks, Vlad. So I’ve been in crypto for about seven years, almost as long as Tanya. And at every crypto conference I go to, the main topic is always about mass adoption. I feel like I’ve heard that mass adoption is one year away every year. Actually, there’s an Ethereum conference just next door, and one of the topics is about, you guessed it, mass adoption.

But what we’ve realized while driving usage with millions of customers to Robinhood crypto adoption isn’t going to happen from forcing people to understand how the blockchain works and especially not from having them farm rewards on every new crypto app. It’s gonna happen not just by making the technology better, but by making the interface so easy and intuitive to use that the technical part is almost invisible. The same reason why hundreds of millions of people started using ChatGPT so quickly. And so that’s what we’ve done with stock tokens. We’ve made it easy, intuitive, and fast while keeping the complicated technology under the hood.

So to show you how this works, I’m gonna walk you through what buying a stock looks like on the traditional brokerage compared to buying stock tokens. Here on the left side of the screen, you’ll see The US app where you can buy equities the traditional way. On the right, the EU app with stock tokens. So starting from this page, let’s say we’re interested in Apple. We’re gonna enter in the amount I wanna buy, about a €100 of Apple.

Hit review. Swipe up. And your trade is complete. And that is it. So what’s amazing is that you’re having a consistent experience across both apps, but the technology making this possible is completely different.

In fact, if we weren’t telling you that this was a token that you were buying with this token badge right here, you’d have no idea this was a blockchain transaction. But actually, if you do tap on this badge, that’s where you’ll learn all about trading stock tokens in the Robinhood app, and I’m gonna quickly cover the highlights. First, as some of you may have been wondering, you won’t be missing out on dividends by holding stock tokens. You’ll get those payments along with any stock splits that might happen directly into the account where you’re holding your tokens. You’ll also have access to ETFs.

Through stock tokens, you can gain exposure to the most popular US ETFs like VOO, SPY, and more. And finally, we’re bringing the same zero commission trading that our users in The US love to The EU. So there will be no commissions, no hidden fees, and no added spreads on stock tokens from Robinhood. One thing I should note is that there is a 0.10% FX conversion fee when your euros are automatically converted to dollars during the trade, and that’s one of the lowest rates available anywhere. So let’s show you how our European app has evolved with the introduction of stock tokens.

Now our app transitions from being a crypto only app to an all in one investment app powered by crypto, all at one of the lowest costs available. So like Johann hinted at earlier, we’ve changed the name of the app to reflect this. Robinhood crypto is now just Robinhood. Here, you’ll get perpetual futures, zero fee Bitcoin trading, and zero commission US stock and ETF tokens all in one place. This is just the beginning of a major expansion of what’s possible for Robinade’s customers in The EU and in the future around the world, all powered through blockchain technology.

I’m incredibly excited about this and I hope you are too. So I’m gonna turn it over to Vlad to explain a little bit more about how this works.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Alright. Thanks, Song. Very cool. Give him a round of applause. He’s been working very hard.

Alright. As of today, this is available now on the Robinhood app for all eligible European customers, And we’re hard at work making it available everywhere else in the world as well, of course subject to local rules and regulations. Now stock tokens may not be the easiest product to understand at first blush. So I’m wondering if you’re curious about how all this works behind the scenes. I can show you if you’ll bear with me.

I find the whole process behind what Song showed you fascinating. I’ll also share a little bit about how it will evolve in the near future and potentially scale to pretty much any asset. This is a chalkboard. I’ve been told that Cary Grant wrote on this on the set of To Catch a Thief, which was filmed here by the way. I don’t know if I believe it, but I have been told this.

Okay. So here you are, our European customer. There’s your mobile phone. And let’s say you wanted to buy some Apple stock. What happens is that order is transmitted through our back end, and then it’s transmitted to a US broker.

Now this is a registered TradFi broker dealer that will buy a traditional share from what I’ll call a TradFi market. Now this could be a market maker or an exchange like the NICEE or the NASDAQ. Then that share is transmitted back to the US broker. It’s custodied in traditional form, and it gets sent to what we call our tokenization engine. Now this is where the magic really happens.

So for every share that’s being purchased from the TradFi market, one token is being minted and this represents the exposure to the share. And then that token gets transmitted back to you. So what this means is, right now every time you place a trade, an actual traditional share is being purchased from the market held in custody and a fresh token is minted. Then similarly, when you wanna sell these shares, the process goes in reverse. Robinhood instructs the introducing broker to sell the share, the underlying share in the open market, then we burn the token, give you the proceeds.

And this is all available twenty four hours a day, five days a week. So I’ll call this phase one. Okay? And let’s talk about what happens in phase two, which hopefully we’ll be rolling out to customers in the next few months. So in phase two, we see the introduction of by Robinhood.

Now what happens with Bitstamp is it’s put alongside the TradFi market and the tokenized instruments would be listed there just like normal cryptos like Bitcoin and ETH, and we now have the choice. So let’s say the TradFi market is closed like it is on weekends and holidays, we can send your orders to Bitstamp, but if it’s open, then we can send it to the TradFi market and benefit from the centuries of liquidity that’s been building on these traditional markets. So you really would get the best of both worlds. And then this unlocks 20 fourseven trading, which is very cool. But that’s not all.

Phase three is when things really start to cook, also a few months away. This is when the possibilities really start to multiply. Okay? Now if you bear with me with my schematic, And we should probably do that. So in phase three, you’re integrating directly with the blockchain.

So we’re working on unlocking the ability for you to take these kinds of tokens outside of our walled garden and into your wallet, into the world of DeFi. How would you feel about self custodying your stock tokens? It’s cool. Right? Well, it just might be available soon in your Robinhood wallet.

So what this means, you could take your stock tokens off of Robinhood, control your keys, integrate directly with the blockchain, and take advantage of all the amazing utilities that developers, including many of you here, are building. So this could mean collateralized lending and borrowing, swapping, really self custody in its very pure form. Now the beauty of this process is that it transfers pretty easily to any type of asset. So you can kind of circumscribe this part here and you could replace this US stockbroker with, say, an art broker or real estate broker, swap out the appropriate market or exchange. Outside of the token stuff, everything is pretty fungible and interchangeable.

So we look forward to expanding your trading options with the assets that you care about most. Pretty cool.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: I’m was looking backstage, I’m sure a lot of people are wondering what is this piece of

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: critical technology blood. Oh, this thing. Yes. That is a hat or as the French would call it, a beret. Vlad.

You know what I meant? Ah, this thing. This thing here. Well, that would be the blockchain in case you couldn’t tell from my amazing sketch or blueprint, really. Right now, it’s Arbitrum, but we’ve been working on something really special.

And it’s still a little bit early, but I think there’s no better time to share with you all than right now. Introducing the Robinhood chain.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: This is the first blockchain optimized for real world assets from real estate to art to stocks with the right technology and regulatory infrastructure needed to carry the entire traditional financial system on its back into the future.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And our goal with stock token on the revenue chain is that in the near future, you will be able to seamlessly transfer your assets in seconds and your ability to trade will not be reliant on any individual broker or counterparty. So long as the blockchain is up and processing transaction, you will maintain access to your hard earned access. Very, very important. I feel that as the benefits of this technology become increasingly clear in the

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: coming years, the pressure and incentive for more and more firms to adopt it will continue to grow. So we’ll continue to work with regulators and bring the entire Robinhood ecosystem on chain, starting with tokenized assets like stocks, perpetual futures, DeFi, of course, spot crypto trading. And from there, we’re planning to open the doors much wider. So and we’ve been talking to a lot of the developers in the room about this already. If you’re interested in being one of our first developers, we would like to open the doors much wider.

So please reach out to us.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And when Vlad says about opening the door much wider on our chain, there is one new asset that comes up a lot. So I want to preannounce it now because I think it really fits the Robinhood mission, and that’s private company stock. These are massive wealth generator for a very small group of rich, well connected insider who get access to these deals early. Like Vlad. Even I actually have difficulty getting into some of these deals.

And crypto has the power to solve this inequality.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: That’s going to be a big one. A lot of the technologies changing the world are startups. I’m sure many of you would love to invest in the companies that you’re using or hearing about every day. But with more and more of these companies staying private, even at huge valuations, it’s just not accessible to most people. So as an example of what’s possible, imagine how your investing portfolio would change if it were possible to get early exposure to private companies like SpaceX and OpenAI, which are now worth billions of dollars.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: That would be exciting to to do, wouldn’t it? But why talk about doing it later when we can do it right now? You may have been wondering what this awesome briefcase that I walked in with was for. Well, I’m holding in my hands right now the keys to the first ever stock tokens for OpenAI. And not just OpenAI, but also SpaceX.

SpaceX is in here too. If you download the Robinhood EU app, which we gave you ample warning to do, you’re about to figure out why we gave you that warning. I’d like to transfer these tokens to you and give you exposure to two of the most valuable private companies in the world right now. We’ll give you a week to onboard, then we’re gonna release all the tokens. So as long as you’re a Robinhood EU customer, you’ll be able to claim what what we believe are the world’s first OpenAI and SpaceX private stock tokens on a decentralized blockchain.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: And just remember, the deadline is end of day on Monday, July 7, August 7. This is really exciting and I can’t wait

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: to see it. Coming from Johan, that means a lot. The last time this guy was excited was when Bitcoin hit a dollar. Okay. So what I’m gonna do is send the OpenAI and SpaceX stock tokens to Johan, and, he’s going to distribute them from the Robinhood entity to everyone that signs up.

So I should caveat, don’t do what I’m doing, which is import your wallet across a livestream. Because I’m a I’m a very sophisticated individual, but generally, yeah, that that’s good advice. So I’m gonna import. I caught the last word from my Crypto Steel here. I’m gonna enter my PIN, very secure, and wait for it to be imported.

It’s working. Hopefully, the five g spins a little bit. Well, know, it’s hot even Internet as a you know, sweating. That is very true. Okay.

What do you think, Johan?

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: You know, we could also use the other phone. I know it’s multiple phones.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: We’ll see. This one looks like it might be connected. Oh, never mind. We didn’t even have time. Voila.

Okay. So let’s see. There it is. There’s the wallet, and you can see in there that we’ve got our OpenAI and SpaceX shares. So let’s see.

Let’s go to OpenAI right here, and I’m gonna send them all to Robinhood Europe for your later disbursement. Shall I?

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Yeah. Why not? Send a million. Okay. Let’s see.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: There we go. A million you said? Yeah. Okay. Why not?

Alright. Oh, and you can even look on the blockchain at the transaction ID on Arbiscan. So you know it’s the Internet because this, would be loading very, very quickly.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: It’s really the five g with all these people here now.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: Yeah. Well, while it loads see, actually, the wallet was loading faster than Arbiscam, wasn’t it?

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Well, you know, there is maybe some congestion on

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: the network. So it should

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: go through shortly and we’ll see the confirmation of the blockchain soon. While Vlad sends out the OpenAI tokens, I’m going to show you what that will look like when these tokens land in your Robinhood account. If you already downloaded the app, you will receive a notification you’re seeing on the screen right now. Then just open the app and hit get started. If you successfully onboard to trade stock token within the next five days you will see the screen right here then click ahead to see the tokens on your account.

Right now, these SpaceX and OpenAI tokens a gift from us. You’re gonna have

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: to hold on to them for a little bit, but we’re working to unlock trading for these on all of our platforms real time twenty four seven. So if you see what’s happening here, we have the technology built to tokenize exposure to private markets, make them accessible on chain and off chain to everyone. And when we’re able to roll this out on a global level, I believe this can solve one of the greatest long standing inequities in our capital markets today.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: I really hope this helps more people realize why crypto is here to stay and make our entire financial system better. To summarize our announcements for today, you can now trade crypto and stock tokens on Robinhood anywhere in The EU, with perpetual futures coming soon. In The US, we’ve launched staking and a host of other features for advanced crypto traders with more coming soon. And for the world, the Robinhood chain is on its way.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Also, I should add some late breaking news. Just last week, the stablecoin we helped launch, USDG, was approved under the new MICA regulation in the EU, where popular alternatives like Tether are banned. So you can look forward to USDG becoming a first class stablecoin across the entire Robinhood ecosystem.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, Robinhood: First class stablecoin. And this is just the beginning of what we’re working to make possible. So thanks for coming today. I hope to see you all at Hood Summit in September because this isn’t it. There’s actually a lot more coming to Robinhood that you should know about.

Tanya Denisova, Chief Operating Officer, Robinhood Crypto: See you all there.

Johan Kirbhat, Head of Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Crypto: Thanks for watching.

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