Written by: Daniel Li, CoinVoice
On June 30, 2025, in Cannes, France, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev announced a series of eye-catching new moves: Robinhood Chain built on Arbitrum, tokenized stock trading, perpetual futures, ETH/SOL Staking, private equity token subscription, and the Rabbit Gold Card that converts offline cashback directly into crypto assets. The press conference named "To Catch a Token" was truly targeting the core of the entire traditional financial system. After the announcement, Robinhood's stock surged nearly 10%, with market value breaking $76 billion, causing excitement in both the crypto market and stock investors.
From a "zero-commission" disruptor to a blockchain financial reconstructor, Robinhood is embedding itself deep into the global financial architecture. This is no longer just a brokerage's advancement, but a strategic pivot spanning technology, products, regulation, and traffic entry points. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration pushing for relaxed crypto regulation and a global asset tokenization wave, Robinhood is attempting to be the first to run through a complete "tokenized stocks + private equity + native Layer 2" closed loop, establishing a new order supporting 24/7 on-chain trading and asset issuance.
This article will be divided into three parts, starting from Robinhood's growth trajectory, gradually breaking down how this "new financial behemoth" uses blockchain technology and compliance advantages to evolve from a "cheap and easy-to-use" brokerage to a core player in the stock tokenization wave.
Robinhood's Rise: From Zero-Commission Innovation to the Beginning of On-Chain Financial Ecosystem
In 2013, two Stanford graduate students, Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, inspired by the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, keenly perceived the structural inequity in the traditional financial system: institutional investors enjoyed trading privileges through technological and cost advantages, while ordinary retail investors were kept out by high commissions and complex barriers. Carrying the ideal of "financial democratization", the two 90s-era founders set out to create a radical product that precisely hit user pain points - Robinhood. In 2015, the App was officially launched, quickly becoming popular with zero-commission, barrier-free securities trading. During the early testing phase, it attracted over 50,000 pre-registrations, with the waiting list exceeding a million before official release. By 2018, the platform had 4 million registered users, surpassing the 36-year-old traditional broker E*TRADE, announcing the era of internet securities platforms.
(Translation continues in the same manner for the entire text)Behind the entire technology stack, Robinhood's self-developed "Robinhood Chain" becomes a key infrastructure. This Layer 2 public chain built on the Arbitrum technology stack is defined as the first native chain serving real-world assets (RWA). Its three-phase advancement path is clear: in the first phase, Robinhood completes US stock procurement and 1:1 token minting; the second phase will incorporate Bitstamp into the trading system, ensuring token assets maintain liquidity during traditional market closures; the third phase fully opens asset self-custody and cross-chain migration capabilities, achieving true asset sovereignty. Robinhood states that this public chain will begin testing by the end of the year, with a full launch in 2026. At that time, Robinhood will officially evolve from a traditional brokerage platform to a key access layer for global real-world asset digitization.
Robinhood's Breakthrough: Compliance Risks and Multidimensional Competition Challenges
In its journey towards global tokenized finance, Robinhood's primary challenge is the complex and severe policy gap. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not yet established a clear legal framework for security tokens. Robinhood's Chief Compliance Officer Anna Lee has candidly admitted at multiple industry forums: "The compliance of stock tokenization, especially at the intersection of traditional securities regulations and blockchain innovation scenarios, still contains many uncertainties and regulatory risks." Robinhood needs to find a balance between existing securities laws and emerging blockchain applications when promoting stock, ETF, and private equity tokenization, avoiding regulatory red lines while driving technological innovation. Although the US House of Representatives passed the "RWA Asset Registration and Compliance Exemption Act" in 2024, the bill has not yet entered Senate voting and cannot provide comprehensive legal protection for Robinhood in the short term.
The European market regulation is relatively mature but still faces challenges. The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) has set a framework for crypto asset regulation, but the specific classification and compliance standards for tokenized securities are still being continuously improved. Robinhood not only needs to address regulatory differences between countries but also handle complex cross-border KYC/AML, investor suitability, and tax reporting issues, with high compliance costs and complex execution. David Chen points out: "We operate in multiple jurisdictions globally, and every detail must be rigorously controlled, which is not just about compliance, but the cornerstone of maintaining user trust."
Industry competition is also becoming increasingly fierce. Coinbase has built a complete ecosystem using Base Layer 2, integrating wallets, trading, staking, and DeFi protocols, with a massive crypto-native user base and an active developer community; Kraken's xStocks project has tested a small number of US stocks on the Solana chain, which, although with shallow liquidity, attracts high-frequency traders due to extremely low latency; in the European market, Revolut and eToro have focused on "financial supermarkets" and "social trading + ETF simulation" models, emphasizing crypto trading and investment education, becoming strong competitors to Robinhood in comprehensive investment services. Facing multidimensional competition, Robinhood not only needs to maintain technological leadership but also build an insurmountable barrier through compliance and user experience.
Robinhood has currently constructed three core moats. First, as a licensed US securities broker, Robinhood has legal qualifications for securities issuance and trading, providing solid legal protection for tokenized securities. Second, acquiring Bitstamp brought over 50 international regulatory licenses and access to liquidity resources from over 5,000 institutional clients, ensuring the token market remains active and deep during traditional exchange closures. Finally, Robinhood has millions of monthly active users, especially establishing strong brand awareness among younger investors, and the Rabbit Gold Card's crypto cashback function has achieved seamless connection between offline consumption and on-chain asset management, creating an imperceptible on-chain user experience.
Despite facing multiple challenges such as unclear regulatory policies, intensifying industry competition, and technological ecosystem fragmentation, Robinhood is leveraging its compliance qualifications, deep institutional liquidity network, and massive user ecosystem to build a global digital financial hub for "tokenized US stocks" and diverse RWAs. As Anna Lee says, compliance and innovation are not opposing forces but the dual engines driving Robinhood forward. In the future, Robinhood hopes to achieve a "borderless chain finance experience" where users do not perceive underlying complexity, truly making digital assets an everyday wealth tool for global investors.
