Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev Talks European Expansion
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Robinhood shares are trading at record highs after the brokerage introduced a suite of new products at its first ever international and crypto-focused event in the south of France. Let's bring in now Robinhood CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev, who joins us now from Cannes. Vlad, you are now offering tokenized U.S. securities to customers outside the U.S., particularly in Europe, where you are. How is this different from exchange-traded products that are already available to investors in Europe? What do the tokenized versions of these products offer that existing products don't?

Yeah, I mean, what we really announced in the EU is first we're expanding and we're live now in 31 countries across the continent.

And we're solving two things with our stock tokens. One is giving our EU customers exposure to U.S. equities, which is one of the most requested features. The second is really demonstrating the beginnings of what we believe is the future of the financial system. We think that crypto and traditional finance will eventually fully merge and the technology will underpin

any tradable asset and you'll get the liquidity and the 24/7 trading of cryptocurrency applied to traditional assets, which I think is a very powerful thing. It's useful for public stocks and also private stocks, which we have the ability to tokenize as well. Now you're developing your own blockchain to record transactions for tokenized stocks. What's the timeline for that to be rolled out?

Yeah, that's right. Well, it's live today on Arbitrum. So we've been working with the folks on Arbitrum, which is an Ethereum layer two for the initial release of our stock tokens in Europe. But we have been working on our own chain, the Robinhood chain, and we've been hard at work. We'd like to have that.

powering the underlying infrastructure and all the DeFi elements. We want it to be the best chain optimized for real world assets, which I think is an important niche that's missing in the market. And for that, it has to be secure. Basically, military grade security has to be fast, low cost. So we felt like that didn't really exist. And so we're excited to bring that to market.

I am curious, Vlad, about the idea of staking, particularly here in the U.S., obviously a program, I believe, starting today, if I have that correct, and also certainly some appetite for that amongst European investors. And I'm wondering how, if at all, those two elements in the U.S. and Europe would differ or be the same. Yeah, I mean, we announced a lot of new products. You mentioned staking, which has been live in the European Union for our customers here recently.

for many months. And it's actually been the number one most requested feature in the U.S. So now that's live. And I think it's two things that are interesting for staking. One is, from a practical standpoint, it allows holders in the U.S. to earn yields on their

Ethereum and Solana and expanding to hopefully any stakeable asset in the future. But also crypto is all about us coming together individually and collectively to secure the network and the blockchain. So the participant, the individual is really the network and staking allows that to be opened up to the millions of customers on Robinhood. So that's what makes it so exciting for us.

I am curious, as we start to see this ecosystem, the broader crypto ecosystem evolve and more importantly expand, and you kind of pointed out in your previous response, this idea that sort of the DeFi world and the traditional finance world are starting to overlap in that Venn diagram. And I am curious as to what your ambitions are for Robinhood. Is this more of a move of a shift where that Venn diagram for Robinhood looks more like traditional finance or something in between?

Yeah, two things. One is I think this is the year and the time is now for crypto to move beyond Bitcoin and meme coins and introduce fundamental utility. And that's why we're most excited about tokenization of real world assets, real world assets with utility being live on blockchains and tokenization.

getting the benefit from everything that crypto technology has to offer. That's one. Two, we think in the future, crypto and traditional financial services will fully merge and crypto will become the infrastructure layer behind all kinds of financial services from payments, which you're starting to see with stable coins, to online

holding deposits, which has been the realm of traditional checking and savings accounts. So you'll have stable coins that pay interest in the future, including USDG, which is the stable coin that we've helped create. And then, of course, investments with tokenized private shares,

equity stock tokens as well. What you're starting to see is the entire financial system being possible to build on crypto technology. And, you know, what we can do is show what the world looks like if we rebuilt Robinhood entirely on crypto technology. And I think that's what we're starting to demonstrate today.

Vlad, let's take a little bit of a step back here because you have talked about how the U.S. is finally ready to catch up to the rest of the world when it comes to being a big player in the crypto world. But what needs to happen? What's the missing ingredient now for the U.S. to become the true backbone of the global financial system when it comes to incorporating crypto?

Yeah, I think the bills that are making their way through Congress, the genius bill and the market structure bill are a great step in the right direction. As for tokenization, we actually believe that there doesn't need to be additional legislation. The SEC has the mandate, the authority to make tokenization of securities happen.

And they're keen to do it. You know, they posted a roundtable or crypto GM Johan was a part of it on tokenization. And I think that it's going to happen in the not too distant future. Private companies require reform of the accreditation standards, which currently shut 80 plus percent of the population out. So that needs to be done.

completely reformed. But there's actually appetite. Several members of Congress are interested in taking that on. And I believe we can make significant progress on reforming the accreditation standards as well. It's crazy that

You know, these companies like OpenAI and SpaceX can be worth hundreds of billions, can get so much appreciation in the private markets, and retail is essentially shut out from that. So that's something that we'd like to fix with our technology as well. All right. Well, you guys have already made a lot of progress toward that. Vlad, really appreciate you taking the time. Also love the suit there. I will let you get back to it fresh off the stage. Thank you.

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