Author: Nancy, PANews
Robinhood, which once attracted a new generation of stockholders to trade MEME stocks because of the "retail investors vs. Wall Street" campaign, officially unveiled its crypto ambitions. As stock tokenization becomes a new battlefield in the crypto market, following Coinbase and Kraken, Robinhood officially announced the launch of tokenized stock trading, covering more than 200 US stocks and ETFs, and launched a Layer2 blockchain dedicated to RWA based on Arbitrum.
Influenced by this news, as of the close of June 30, Robinhood's stock price rose by more than 12.7% to $93.6, setting a record high. At the same time, Arbitrum token ARB fell slightly during the day, mainly because the previous positive news had been digested by the market in advance.
Officially launched the tokenization of US stocks in the EU, and jointly developed the official L2 with Arbitrum
On the evening of June 30, at a press conference in Cannes, France, Robinhood announced that it would provide stock tokenization trading services to EU users. It now supports more than 200 US stock assets for 24-hour on-chain, 5 days a week circulation and trading, including OpenAI and SpaceX tokens, and plans to expand to thousands by the end of this year.
Currently, Robinhood EU is giving away the first batch of private company stock tokens for free. If you are a Robinhood EU user and meet the qualifications, you can claim the tokens in the app until July 7.
It is reported that the product only charges a 0.1% foreign exchange conversion fee to reduce the high intermediary costs for European investors to access the U.S. market. In the future, users will be able to self-custody tokenized stocks and ETFs through Robinhood's crypto wallet, or choose a simplified operation experience without managing private keys.
Moreover, Robinhood said it is developing its own Layer2 blockchain designed for RWA based on Arbitrum, tentatively named Robinhood Chain, and its availability depends on applicable regulations and future launch time. Johann Kerbrat, general manager of Robinhood Crypto, said that the design of this new chain began several years ago and was structured around RWA, aiming to break the "walled garden" of traditional finance and achieve a more open and transparent asset trading experience.
In fact, Robinhood has long announced the launch of its stock token product. In May this year, Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Robinhood is actively developing a blockchain-based platform that allows European retail investors to trade U.S. tokenized stocks, thereby expanding its business layout in the European market.
According to people familiar with the matter, the joint venture may be launched by partnering with a digital asset company, and Arbitrum and Solana are seeking to become partners in the project. The negotiations between the two parties are still in progress and no final conclusion has been made.
In the same month, a job posting by Robinhood also confirmed this business layout. The company is looking for a product manager to build a new encryption product architecture from scratch that supports cross-chain expansion. Currently, the position is closed for application.
In order to advance this business layout, Robinhood obtained a Lithuanian brokerage license in April this year, qualifying it to provide investment services within the European Union. At the same time, Robinhood acquired the established cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp for $200 million to further consolidate its technology and compliance foundation in the European market.
As for technical cooperation, multiple signs have shown that Arbitrum has become a core partner of Robinhood's tokenized stock project. For example, the entrance to Robinhood's official website appears on the homepage of the Arbitrum Portal official website together with the Stylus technology promoted by Arbitrum; Robinhood announced that it will release important crypto business at the Cannes EthCC conference, and will participate in fireside chats with senior executives of the Arbitrum development team. The market has responded to this good news first. Arbitrum's token ARB has achieved double-digit growth in recent days, with the highest increase of more than 25% in the past 7 days. This is not the first cooperation between Robinhood and Arbitrum. As early as March last year, the Robinhood wallet announced the integration of Arbitrum to provide its users with improved token exchange services.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to launching US stock tokenization products, Robinhood also announced a series of crypto asset functions, including that European users will be able to trade crypto perpetual contracts (with no expiration date) with up to 3x leverage, and US users will be able to pledge ETH and SOL in compliant areas. In addition, Robinhood will also launch a credit card that supports crypto cashback, a personalized AI assistant Robinhood Cortex, a temporary 1% reward for crypto deposits, and the introduction of a "tax batch" function to help users achieve better tax strategies when selling crypto assets.
Tokenized stocks welcome more players, Robinhood submits policy proposal calling for regulatory reform
In the past few months, many crypto institutions have regarded the tokenization of securities as an important part of their strategic expansion. For example, Kraken has allowed non-US customers to trade stocks in the form of tokens, and has launched 60 tokenized US stocks in Europe, Latin America, Africa and other places; Coinbase is seeking SEC approval to launch tokenized stock services, and if approved, it can conduct stock trading business to compete with other brokers; Gemini also announced that it will cooperate with Dinari to launch tokenized stock trading services for EU users, and the first supported asset is Strategy (MSTR), and more tokenized stocks and ETFs will continue to be launched in the future; Dinari, a US stock trading service startup, has obtained broker-dealer registration qualifications for its subsidiaries, making it the first tokenized stock platform in the United States to obtain such approval.
For traditional brokerages that are deeply restricted by compliance and clearing systems, the tokenization of securities is gradually changing the traditional structure with its low threshold, flexibility and composability. Robinhood, which started as a retail securities trading platform, has faced growth pressure from traditional businesses in recent years. Its zero-commission model for stock trading has been difficult to maintain its competitive advantage. For this reason, it has also started a diversified layout of encryption business and achieved good results. In the first quarter of this year, Robinhood's total revenue increased by 50% year-on-year, of which the encryption business revenue doubled year-on-year to US$252 million.
The disruptive potential of tokenization is another crypto track that Robinhood is rushing to seize. In fact, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has publicly and clearly expressed his support for the tokenization of securities, saying that expanding retail investors' investment channels in the private equity market is "one of the most important policy priorities" of the company.
In January this year, Tenev wrote an article in The Washington Post pointing out that companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX are still private companies. Only a small group of wealthy insiders with access and capital can enter the company in the early stages. These people are now often getting 1,000 times or more of their initial investment, while ordinary investors have no chance to participate at all. This investment gap is becoming more and more serious-the number of listed companies in the United States today is only half of that in 1996. At the same time, the so-called "qualified investor rule" limits most private investment opportunities to groups with a net worth of more than $1 million and an annual income of more than $200,000, resulting in about 80% of American households being excluded.
Tenev believes that what crypto technology really provides is a financial system that is fairer, more flexible, and more in line with the needs of the 21st century, and will usher in the most inclusive investment revolution since stock trading went from trading floors to electronicization. This technology can flexibly split and distribute ownership, making it freely tradable like stocks, with only a few changes to existing corporate equity legal documents. Once private companies are tokenized, ordinary investors can participate in their early stages of development, rather than waiting for them to go public at a valuation of tens of billions of dollars before being allowed to enter. Companies can use this to obtain crypto retail funds from around the world without sacrificing the normal governance mechanisms of private companies, such as employee options and share lock-ups.
However, Tenev also admitted that the equity of private companies in the United States is currently regulated by the U.S. SEC, but no clear guidance has been given on how to legally issue and trade tokenized securities on crypto platforms. In contrast, the European Union, Hong Kong, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and other places have successively established a complete regulatory framework to support security token issuance (STO) and digital exchanges.
He proposed that the United States should promote three key reforms to release the dividends of securities tokenization: First, abolish the qualified investor system based on wealth thresholds. In an era where everyone can freely buy and sell MEME coins, it is outdated and absurd to measure investment qualifications by net assets. If a threshold must be set, it should be based on investment knowledge and risk self-assessment, rather than account balances; second, establish a "Securities Token Registration System" to provide small and medium-sized companies with a new financing path in addition to traditional IPOs, reducing costs and thresholds; third, provide a clear compliance path for crypto trading platforms in and outside the United States, including centralized and decentralized exchanges, to ensure that securities token transactions can be legally and safely opened to the public.
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 revealed that it will build an RWA trading platform Robinhood RWA Exchange based on Solana and Base.
