Author: Nancy, PANews
Robinhood, which once attracted a new generation of stock investors to trade MEME stocks during the "retail investors' battle against Wall Street", has officially unveiled its crypto ambitions. As stock tokenization becomes a new battlefield in the crypto market, following Coinbase and Kraken, Robinhood has officially announced the launch of tokenized stock trading, covering over 200 US stocks and ETFs, and launching a dedicated Layer 2 blockchain for RWA based on Arbitrum.
Influenced by this news, Robinhood's stock price rose over 12.7% to $93.6 at market close on June 30, once reaching a historical high. Meanwhile, Arbitrum's token ARB saw a slight intraday pullback, mainly because the positive news had been prematurely digested by the market.
Officially launching tokenized US stocks in the EU, collaborating with Arbitrum to develop an official L2
On the evening of June 30, at a conference in Cannes, France, Robinhood announced that it will provide tokenized stock trading services to EU users, currently supporting 24/7 on-chain trading for over 200 US stock assets, including tokens for OpenAI and SpaceX, with plans to expand to thousands by the end of the year.
Currently, Robinhood EU is giving away the first batch of private company stock tokens for free. Eligible Robinhood EU users can claim these tokens within the app, with the deadline being July 7.
The product reportedly only charges a 0.1% foreign exchange conversion fee to reduce the high intermediary costs for European investors accessing the US market. In the future, users will be able to self-custody tokenized stocks and ETFs through Robinhood's crypto wallet, or choose a simplified experience without managing private keys.
Moreover, Robinhood stated that it is developing a Layer 2 blockchain specifically designed for RWA based on Arbitrum, tentatively named Robinhood Chain, with its availability depending on applicable regulations and future launch timing. Robinhood Crypto's General Manager Johann Kerbrat noted that this new chain's design began years ago, architectured around RWA, aiming to break down traditional finance's "walled garden" and create a more open and transparent asset trading experience.
In fact, Robinhood has been hinting at launching stock token products for a while. In May, Bloomberg reported that Robinhood was actively developing a blockchain-based platform allowing European retail investors to trade tokenized US stocks, expanding its business layout in the European market.
According to sources, this joint venture might be launched through collaboration with a digital asset company, with Arbitrum and Solana competing to become project partners. Negotiations between the parties are still ongoing with no final conclusion.
In the same month, a Robinhood job posting also confirmed this business strategy, seeking a product manager to build a new crypto product architecture from scratch that supports cross-chain expansion. The position is now closed.
To advance this business layout, Robinhood obtained a Lithuanian brokerage license in April, qualifying to provide investment services across the EU. Simultaneously, Robinhood acquired the veteran crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million, further consolidating its technological and compliance foundation in the European market.
On the technical collaboration front, multiple signs indicate Arbitrum as the core partner for Robinhood's tokenized stock project. For instance, Robinhood's portal appeared alongside Arbitrum's promoted Stylus technology on the Arbitrum Portal homepage; Robinhood previewed announcing important crypto business at the Cannes EthCC conference and will participate in a fireside chat with Arbitrum's development team leadership. The market has already reacted to this positive news, with Arbitrum's token ARB achieving double-digit growth, rising over 25% in the past 7 days. This is not the first collaboration between Robinhood and Arbitrum; in March last year, Robinhood Wallet announced integration with Arbitrum, providing improved token swap services for its users.
Notably, in addition to launching tokenized US stock products, Robinhood simultaneously announced a series of crypto asset features, including crypto perpetual contracts with up to 3x leverage for European users, staking for ETH and SOL for US users in compliant regions. Additionally, Robinhood will launch a crypto cashback credit card, a personalized AI assistant Robinhood Cortex, offer a temporary 1% bonus on crypto deposits, and introduce a "tax lot" feature to help users achieve more optimal tax strategies when selling crypto assets.
More Players Enter Tokenized Stocks, Robinhood Submits Policy Proposal Calling for Regulatory Reform
In recent months, multiple crypto institutions have made securities tokenization a key part of their strategic expansion. For example, Kraken already allows non-US clients to trade stocks in token form, launching 60 tokenized US stocks in Europe, Latin America, and Africa; Coinbase is seeking SEC approval for tokenized stock services; Gemini announced collaboration with Dinari to launch tokenized stock trading for EU users, with the first supported asset being Strategy (MSTR); Dinari, a US stock trading service startup, has obtained broker-dealer registration for its subsidiary, becoming the first US platform approved for tokenized stocks.
For traditional brokers heavily restricted by compliance and clearing systems, securities tokenization is gradually disrupting the traditional landscape with its low barriers, flexibility, and composability. As a retail securities trading platform, Robinhood has faced growth pressures in its traditional business, with its zero-commission stock trading model no longer providing a competitive advantage. Thus, it has initiated diversification into crypto business with good results. In the first quarter of this year, Robinhood's total revenue grew 50% year-on-year, with crypto business revenue doubling to $252 million.
The disruptive potential of tokenization is another crypto track Robinhood is rushing to enter. In fact, Robinhood's CEO Vlad Tenev has openly expressed support for securities tokenization, stating that expanding retail investors' channels to private market investments is one of the company's "most important policy priorities".
In January, Tenev wrote in The Washington Post that companies like OpenAI and SpaceX remain private, with only a small group of well-connected and capitalized insiders able to enter early, often receiving returns 1000 times their initial investment, while ordinary investors have no participation opportunity. This investment gap is becoming increasingly severe - the number of US public companies is now only half of what it was in 1996. Meanwhile, "accredited investor rules" restrict private investment opportunities to those with net assets over $1 million or annual income over $200,000, excluding about 80% of US households.
Tenev believes crypto technology truly offers a fairer, more flexible financial system more aligned with 21st-century needs, opening the most inclusive investment revolution since stock trading moved from trading floors to electronic platforms. This technology can flexibly divide and distribute ownership, making it freely tradable like stocks with minimal modifications to existing corporate stock legal documents. Once privatized companies are tokenized, ordinary investors can participate in their early stages instead of waiting until they go public with billion-dollar valuations. Enterprises can obtain global crypto retail investor funds without sacrificing traditional governance mechanisms like employee options and share lockups.
However, Tenev also candidly acknowledged that US private company equity is currently regulated by the SEC, but clear guidelines for legally issuing and trading tokenized securities on crypto platforms have not been provided. In contrast, the EU, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi have successively established comprehensive regulatory frameworks supporting securities token offerings (STO) and digital exchanges.
He proposed that the United States should advance three key reforms to unleash the dividend of securities tokenization: first, abolish the accredited investor system based on wealth thresholds. In an era where everyone can freely buy and sell MEME coins, using net assets to measure investment qualifications is outdated and absurd. If a threshold must be set, it should be based on investment knowledge and risk self-assessment, not account balance; second, establish a "securities token registration system" to provide new financing paths for small and medium-sized companies beyond traditional IPO, lowering costs and barriers; third, provide clear compliance paths for cryptocurrency trading platforms both inside and outside the United States, including centralized and decentralized exchanges, to ensure legal and safe public access to securities token trading.
It is worth mentioning that Robinhood submitted a 42-page policy proposal to the US SEC in May this year, including a nine-page comment letter on asset tokenization, calling for the establishment of the world's first federal regulatory framework for RWA tokenization, and revealing that it will build the Robinhood RWA Exchange trading platform based on Solana and Base.
