Robinhood Aims to Bridge Wall Street and Crypto Culture with New Blockchain
Robinhood Chain is positioning itself as a financial hub catering to both institutional investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, a strategy encapsulated by CEO Vlad Tenev’s “two wolves” analogy. According to Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s head of crypto, this approach seeks to balance sophisticated financial products like tokenized equities and derivatives with the attention-grabbing appeal of meme coins.
“We want to show customers that we care about what they care about,” Kerbrat told Decrypt. “We want to make sure the chain works for what people care about.”
A Strong Debut
The Robinhood Chain has experienced a rapid uptake since its launch over a month ago, accumulating nearly $800 million in total value locked and processing over 200 million transactions, Kerbrat reported.
In an exclusive interview with FOMO Hour on Friday, Kerbrat, who oversees Robinhood’s crypto and international operations, explained the decision to build on an Ethereum layer-2 network. This choice allows the company to leverage existing security and decentralization while dedicating resources to product development. He highlighted the chain’s deposit and transaction volumes as early indicators of its adoption.
“We also look a lot at developer activity, that’s something that is very important for me,” Kerbrat stated. “I want the chain to not just be the chain for Robinhood, but also be the chain that anyone can use and interact with our product, like our stock tokens, but also everything else that we are building.”
Expanding On-Chain Offerings
The Robinhood Chain network is integral to the company’s broader initiative to bring brokerage products on-chain. Users can engage in trading real-world assets, including approximately 200 tokenized stocks, lend stablecoins, and trade perpetual futures.
Kerbrat emphasized the advantage for retail investors in being able to trade outside of traditional market hours, allowing them to react to market-moving news. “The world doesn’t stop on weekends,” he said. “News is happening on Fridays after market close, and people want to be able to hedge their position, which was something that was not really available to retail until recently.”
Embracing Meme Coins
In addition to tokenized stocks and lending services, Kerbrat confirmed that Robinhood is making space for meme coins, recognizing their role in driving liquidity and user engagement on the new network.
“We think memes are an important part of crypto,” Kerbrat explained. “We think that for a new chain, like Robinhood Chain, these tokens have value. They bring liquidity, they bring interest from customers, especially the DeFi-type of customer that are pretty hard to move.” He added, “If meme coins are something that they are extremely interested in, we want to make sure that the chain is supported for that.”
Ultimately, Robinhood’s objective is to attract individuals new to cryptocurrency rather than vie for existing users on rival blockchains. “If we see tens of millions of customers trying to use a chain, I think that will be a good win for us,” Kerbrat concluded. “We want to bring more customers on-chain and show them the benefit of the technology.”
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