The Tokenization Wave of US Stocks: Robinhood's On-Chain Financial Breakthrough
Author: Daniel Li, CoinVoice
June 30, 2025, Cannes, France. In the center of the stage, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev announced a series of eye-catching new initiatives: the Robinhood Chain built on Arbitrum, tokenized trading of US stocks, perpetual futures, ETH/SOL staking, private equity token subscriptions, and the Rabbit Gold Card that directly converts offline consumption cashback into crypto assets. The press conference was titled “To Catch a Token,” but its true target is the Achilles’ heel of the entire traditional financial system. After the announcement, Robinhood’s stock price surged nearly 10%, with a market capitalization exceeding $76 billion, igniting excitement among both crypto market and US stock investors.
From a “zero-commission” disruptor to a blockchain financial reconstructer, Robinhood is embedding itself deep within the global financial architecture. This is no longer a brokerage’s path to advancement but a strategic shift that spans technology, products, regulation, and traffic entry points. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration pushing for relaxed crypto regulations in the U.S. and the global surge in asset tokenization, Robinhood aims to be the first to establish a complete closed loop of “tokenized U.S. stocks + private equity + native Layer 2,” creating a new order that supports 24/7 on-chain trading and asset issuance.
This article will be divided into three parts, starting with the growth trajectory of Robinhood, gradually breaking down how this “new financial giant” leverages blockchain technology and compliance advantages to evolve from a “cheap and user-friendly” brokerage into a core player in the wave of tokenized US stocks.
The Rise of Robinhood: From Zero-Commission Innovation to the Beginning of On-Chain Financial Ecosystem
In 2013, two graduate students at Stanford University, Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, inspired by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, keenly observed the structural inequities in the traditional financial system: institutional investors enjoy trading privileges due to their technological and cost advantages, while ordinary retail investors are blocked by high commissions and complex thresholds. With the ideal of “financial democratization,” the two founders, born in the 90s, set out to create a radical product that precisely addresses user pain points—Robinhood. In 2015, the app was officially launched, quickly gaining popularity for its zero-commission, no-threshold securities trading services. During the early testing phase, it attracted over 50,000 reservations, and the waitlist surpassed one million before its official release. By 2018, the number of registered users on the platform had reached 4 million, surpassing the traditional brokerage E*TRADE, which has a 36-year history, heralding the arrival of the internet securities platform era.
As the business model matures, Robinhood’s corporate positioning has gradually upgraded from a “free securities platform” to a “new generation financial gateway.” By the first quarter of 2025, the number of funded users on the platform reached 25.8 million, with a year-on-year growth of over 8%; total client assets increased to $221 billion, with an average managed asset per user of $8,566, setting a new historical high. This leap not only enhances Robinhood’s asset-bearing capacity but also marks a shift in the user structure from “novice retail investors” to the “middle-class main force.” Particularly noteworthy is that the number of paid Robinhood Gold members surged past 3.2 million in Q1 2025, representing a year-on-year growth of 90%, which fully demonstrates its penetration and asset stickiness among the young high-net-worth user group.
However, Robinhood’s ambitions go far beyond “putting assets on the blockchain”; it is attempting to build a complete ecosystem for on-chain asset management, moving towards the positioning of a “crypto version of Fidelity” as a one-stop platform. As early as 2022, this strategic outline had begun to take shape. That year, Robinhood was the first to launch a non-custodial wallet, Robinhood Wallet, allowing users to freely deposit and withdraw BTC and ETH, and connect with mainstream DeFi protocols; in 2023, it further opened up on-chain asset withdrawals, breaking down the barriers of centralized accounts; by 2024, it made a $200 million acquisition of Bitstamp, Europe’s oldest compliant exchange, securing over 50 financial licenses across the UK, EU, Singapore, and integrating its deep liquidity network covering 5000+ institutions with a round-the-clock trading engine. This deal not only significantly compressed the compliance cycle but also packaged Robinhood’s institutional service capabilities with a global compliance framework, paving the last mile for its entry into on-chain finance.
From zero commissions to laying out cryptocurrency, Robinhood has always been at the forefront of the industry, and these strategic changes have quickly brought tangible returns. The Q1 2025 financial report shows that the company’s total revenue reached $583 million, with the cryptocurrency business contributing as much as $252 million, accounting for 43%, surpassing options ($240 million) and stock trading ($184 million) for the first time, becoming the main source of income. This not only reflects the rapid growth of new businesses such as tokenized stocks but also signifies that Robinhood has initially mastered three core capabilities: the cryptocurrency trading entry, liquidity engine, and financial services closed loop. As founder Tenev has publicly emphasized multiple times, “Robinhood’s ultimate mission is not to become a replica of Wall Street, but to build an on-chain financial underlying system that everyone can access.”
Robinhood Leap: Opening a New Era of Tokenized US Stocks and Global On-Chain Investment
On June 30, 2025, at the “To Catch a Token” launch event held in Cannes, France, Robinhood officially elevated its crypto strategy and clearly outlined its decentralized market layout and product system for the first time. The core strategy announced at the event positions Europe as the outpost, focusing on “tokenized US stocks + perpetual contracts + All-in-One investment App.” Technically, Robinhood announced that over 200 US-listed stocks and ETFs have been tokenized and are on-chain through Arbitrum Layer2, allowing users to conduct real-time trading 24/5 within the App. On-chain dividends and stock split synchronization mechanisms have been initiated to ensure users have real rights and interests. By the end of the year, Robinhood plans to expand to over a thousand underlying assets, aiming to create the world’s most liquid and lowest entry barrier on-chain securities market.
In line with this strategy, Robinhood has fully upgraded its original European app “Robinhood Crypto” to “Robinhood”, officially establishing itself as a one-stop comprehensive investment platform. In addition to the existing cryptocurrency trading functions, the platform will launch perpetual contract trading in the summer of 2025, supported by liquidity and clearing from Bitstamp. The mobile UI designed for European users is extremely simplified, with take-profit and stop-loss, as well as leverage settings completed through sliders, significantly reducing the learning cost for non-professional users, achieving the first instance of “on-chain derivatives democratization”.
At the same time, Robinhood has opened private token offerings for high-potential startups such as SpaceX and OpenAI, allowing eligible users to claim tokens within the app. These tokens will be issued based on real equity at a 1:1 ratio, providing ordinary users with their first opportunity to directly participate in private equity through digital assets. This breakthrough changes the market structure originally dominated by high-net-worth investors and institutions, promoting “private equity parity” in the context of cryptocurrency. To encourage participation, Robinhood has also established a “2% deposit reward” incentive mechanism, attempting to maximize the activation of the European market’s front-line value in the tokenization reform.
Apart from Europe, the U.S. market, as the core base for Robinhood users, was also assigned the role of “advanced on-chain experience” during this press conference. The first batch of products includes ETH and SOL staking services, which are fully open in the U.S. market, with no minimum amount requirement and a 2% deposit reward. Robinhood emphasizes that staking is not only a tool for earning yields but also a part of users’ participation in network co-construction. Meanwhile, Robinhood’s AI investment assistant, Cortex, was officially unveiled at the press conference. This assistant will prioritize services for Robinhood Gold users, integrating on-chain data, token news, whale transactions, and financial events to generate personalized strategy suggestions and risk alerts.
Behind the entire technology stack, Robinhood’s self-developed “Robinhood Chain” has become a key infrastructure. This Layer 2 public chain built on the Arbitrum technology stack is defined as the first native RWA chain serving real assets. Its three-phase advancement path has been clearly outlined: the first phase involves Robinhood completing the purchase of U.S. stocks and the minting of 1:1 tokens; the second phase will incorporate Bitstamp into the trading system, ensuring that token assets maintain liquidity during traditional market closures; the third phase will fully open up self-custody and cross-chain migration capabilities for assets, achieving true asset sovereignty. Robinhood stated that the public chain will begin testing by the end of the year and will be fully launched in 2026. At that time, Robinhood will officially evolve from a traditional brokerage platform into a key access layer for the digitalization of global real assets.
Robinhood Breakthrough: Challenges of Compliance Risks and Multidimensional Competition
In the journey towards global tokenized finance, Robinhood faces the primary challenge of a complex and severe policy gap. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has yet to establish a clear and specific legal framework for security tokens. Robinhood’s Chief Compliance Officer, Anna Lee, has candidly stated at several industry forums: “The compliance of tokenized U.S. stocks, especially at the intersection of traditional securities regulations and blockchain innovation scenarios, still presents numerous uncertainties and regulatory risks.” As Robinhood pushes for the tokenization of stocks, ETFs, and private equity, it must seek a balance between existing securities laws and emerging blockchain applications, promoting technological innovation while avoiding regulatory red lines. Although the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “RWA Asset Registration and Compliance Exemption Act” in 2024, the bill has not yet reached a vote in the Senate, making it difficult for Robinhood to obtain comprehensive legal protection in the short term.
The regulatory environment in the European market is relatively mature, but challenges still exist. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) has set a framework for the regulation of crypto assets, but the specific classification and compliance standards for tokenized securities are still being refined. Robinhood not only has to deal with regulatory differences across countries but also has to handle complex issues such as cross-border KYC/AML, investor suitability, and tax reporting, resulting in high compliance costs and complicated execution. David Chen pointed out: “We operate in multiple jurisdictions around the world, and every detail must be rigorously controlled, which is not only about compliance but also the cornerstone of maintaining user trust.”
Industry competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Coinbase has built a complete ecosystem through Base Layer2, integrating wallets, trading, staking, and DeFi protocols, with a large native cryptocurrency user base and an active developer community; Kraken’s xStocks project is testing a small number of US stock tokens on the Solana chain, and although liquidity is still shallow, it attracts high-frequency traders due to extremely low latency; in the European market, Revolut and eToro are delving into the “financial supermarket” and “social trading + ETF simulation” models, balancing crypto trading with investment education, becoming strong competitors to Robinhood in providing comprehensive investment services. In the face of multi-dimensional competition, Robinhood not only needs to maintain a technological lead but also must build insurmountable barriers through compliance and user experience.
Robinhood has currently built a three-layer core moat. First, as a licensed securities broker in the United States, Robinhood has the legal qualifications for securities issuance and trading, providing a solid legal guarantee for tokenized securities. Second, the acquisition of Bitstamp has brought over 50 international regulatory licenses and access to liquidity resources from more than 5,000 institutional clients, ensuring that the token market can remain active and deep even during the off-hours of traditional exchanges. Finally, Robinhood has tens of millions of monthly active users, particularly establishing strong brand recognition among the younger generation of investors. The Rabbit Gold Card credit card’s crypto cashback feature has achieved a seamless connection between off-chain consumption and on-chain asset management, creating a great user experience with an effortless on-chain process.
Despite facing multiple challenges such as unclear regulatory policies, intensified industry competition, and fragmented technological ecosystems, Robinhood is fully committed to building a global digital financial hub for “tokenized US stocks” and diversified RWA, leveraging its compliance credentials, deep institutional liquidity network, and large user ecosystem. As Anna Lee stated, compliance and innovation are not opposing forces but rather the twin engines driving Robinhood forward. In the future, Robinhood aims to create a “boundaryless on-chain financial experience” where users do not need to perceive the underlying complexities, truly making digital assets a daily wealth tool accessible to global investors.