Fifteen years ago, in a cramped apartment near the French Riviera, 21-year-old Johann Kerbrat worked at McDonald's during the day and taught himself programming at night.

Now, as Robinhood’s senior vice president and director of crypto, he’s back with the company’s most ambitious suite of crypto products yet.

Cannes "Past"

“My studio was probably smaller than your bathroom,” recalls Kerbrat, who quit his job to launch his first fintech startup — a no-code payments company that helped small merchants build e-commerce sites without hiring developers — before enrolling at the University of Nice nearby.

"That was the beginning of e-commerce. Merchants at the time either had to spend tens of thousands of euros hiring an agency or they couldn't do business online. Our idea was to allow people to set up their own store without technical knowledge - a bit like Shopify today."

The timing was perfect. In the early 2010s, online commerce was booming, and Keblat’s tools gave small merchants a chance to compete. It also made him realize how fragile and expensive the global financial system was.

Enlightenment: Bitcoin White Paper

Kerbrat later recalled that it was a conversation with a Greek classmate that made him realize the "fragility" of the traditional banking system.

The classmate told him that his family's bank account was frozen during the eurozone crisis, and life was once stagnant. At the same time, merchants on his platform also kept giving feedback: the handling fees were expensive, the refund process was complicated, and credit card fraud became an uncontrollable sunk cost.

“Then I read the Bitcoin white paper,” he said, “and I was like, ‘Well, this is the solution to everything.’ ”

That was in 2010. Kerbrat started assembling mining machines, deploying wallets, and trying to build a payment interface based on Bitcoin. He did not use Bitcoin to get rich overnight, nor did he choose to be a speculator, but tried to understand the real possibilities behind this technology.

“That’s the stage where you realize that cryptocurrencies are not just an asset class, but a structural change.”

Leading Robinhood to "gamble big" on cryptocurrencies

Later, he joined Airbnb and Uber and became one of the core engineers of the platform. Before joining Robinhood, he also served as VP of Engineering at Iron Fish (a privacy Layer1 blockchain project), focusing on privacy technologies such as zero-knowledge proof. This experience allowed him to return to the crypto circle and made him realize that "user experience" is the biggest shortcoming of the crypto industry.

In 2021, he officially joined Robinhood Crypto as Chief Technology Officer and was promoted to Senior Vice President and General Manager in 2023.

It has been 13 years since he first opened the Bitcoin white paper.

Under Kerbrat’s leadership, Robinhood Crypto has launched a number of important products:

• In 2022, Robinhood Wallet was launched. This is a non-custodial wallet that functions similarly to MetaMask, but with a simpler interface and more oriented towards beginners. He described it as "a Web3 browser built for ordinary people."
• Starting in 2023, it began to support Bitcoin transfers and on-chain asset withdrawals, marking Robinhood's move from a "trading interface" to "crypto infrastructure."
• In 2024, he led Robinhood to acquire the European crypto exchange Bitstamp, attempting to use the more than 50 licenses held by Bitstamp as a fulcrum to enter the European market. In his view, this is an inevitable choice in the face of unclear US regulation: "We can't bet our future on 'if the SEC relaxes regulation'."

He emphasized that "compliance is not an obstacle, but a market barrier." This is also the key to Robinhood's ability to gain a foothold in the crypto business.

A gorgeous return

Now, on the same coastline in Cannes where he once lived and worked the fast-food midnight shift, Kerbrat is in the midst of the most ambitious launch of a suite of crypto products in Robinhood’s history, in a Belle Époque mansion called the Château de la Croix des Gardes.

On Monday, the company announced that it would expand the issuance of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs in Europe, launch crypto staking services in the United States, provide perpetual futures to eligible EU traders, and launch a new Layer 2 blockchain optimized for real-world asset settlement and 24/7 trading.

“It’s definitely surreal,” Kerbrat said, sitting inside the iconic Carlton Hotel, a five-star landmark that was once out of reach for him. “I used to walk past this when I was younger – I never thought I’d be able to live here.”

Robinhood's New Layout

The launch coincides with the first-ever Ethereum Community Conference in Cannes, as well as Robinhood’s recent regulatory approval in Europe.

Robinhood’s latest move is its most serious attempt yet to merge traditional finance with blockchain-based infrastructure.

Robinhood shares hit an all-time high following the news, and are up more than 100% this year.

Kerbrat said the goal isn’t to show off features, but to make encryption “hide” in the background, which he likened to “plumbing.”

“You don’t think about how the water gets to your tap,” he said. “You just expect it to just turn on and work.”

But there is still "pipeline" to be built.

The core of Monday's release is tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, which are now available to users in 30 EU and EEA countries. Initially built on Arbitrum, these tokens provide 24-hour trading access 5 days a week, support dividend payments, and Robinhood does not charge commissions or spreads. Eventually, they will be migrated to a custom Layer 2 blockchain that will support tokenized assets, seamless bridging, and self-custody.

In the U.S., Robinhood is launching staking services for Ethereum and Solana, allowing users to earn rewards by supporting network operations. In Europe, crypto perpetual futures will offer up to 3x leverage to eligible users, with trades routed through Bitstamp. Other upgrades include smart exchange routing, tax batch management, and advanced charting tools — all designed to make cryptocurrency trading as seamless and intuitive as stock trading.

“When we talk about mass adoption,” said Johann Kerbrat, “this is what it looks like. A product that people use — without having to understand how it works.”

For Johann Kerbrat, who spent his teenage years in Cannes and Nice, the return is more than symbolic. It’s a testament to how far he’s come — and how much still feels the same.

His father worked in IT, and his mother stayed at home to look after him and his sister. One day, his father brought home a clunky old Apple computer with a black-and-white screen, and that was the spark. At 7, he started experimenting with computers. At 11, he was writing code regularly. By 17, he was trying to fix what he saw as flaws in the internet economy.

Kerbrat’s parents, who came to the event, said they remember those early days — the tiny apartment, the first lines of code, the endless conversations with merchants who didn’t quite believe him — when anyone could build an e-commerce site without knowing how to code.

“We chose Cannes because the licensing and the congress are here,” Kerbrat said. “But I’m not going to pretend that this doesn’t feel good.” He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “I never thought I’d be back this way.”

Note: The information in this article is compiled from CNBC, Unchained podcast, Robinhood Investor Relations official website, etc.