Robinhood, the company behind one of the most popular trading apps for everyday investors, just revealed a sweeping new vision for the future of finance. And its bold plan seems to leave traditional Wall Street institutions behind.
The company announced a daring set of new products this week from Cannes, France. These offerings are designed to move traditional financial assets, like company stocks, investment funds (ETFs), and even complex trading tools called derivatives, entirely onto the blockchain.
The clear message? Crypto isn’t just for digital money anymore. It’s for everything.
A New Kind of Stock Market
The most attention-grabbing announcement was stock tokens. Think of these as digital versions of U.S. company stocks and ETFs. Now, for the first time, European customers can get access to these major American investments without needing a traditional stockbroker, a big Wall Street firm, or even being physically in the U.S.
Unlike buying regular shares through a brokerage, these stock tokens exist on Arbitrum, which is a Layer 2 blockchain built on top of Ethereum. Imagine Ethereum as a busy main highway for digital transactions; a Layer 2 like Arbitrum is a faster, less congested side road that uses the main highway for security, making transactions quicker and cheaper. These tokens can be bought and sold 24 hours a day, five days a week. Robinhood claims they come with no commission fees or extra charges from them, and even pay out dividends (portions of a company’s profit distributed to shareholders, now paid directly to token holders). Over 200 different stocks and ETFs are available.
In simple terms: your investment portfolio now lives on a digital, decentralized ledger.
At our recent crypto event, we announced a limited Stock Token giveaway on OpenAI and SpaceX to eligible European customers. While it is true that they aren’t technically “equity” (you can see the precise dynamics in our Terms for those interested), the tokens effectively give… — Vlad Tenev (@vladtenev) July 2, 2025
Building Its Own Digital Backbone
But Robinhood isn’t just using existing blockchain technology. It’s actively building its own custom Layer 2 blockchain. This new digital network is specifically designed to power the tokenization of real-world assets. This means taking things that exist in the physical world, like company shares, investment funds, and potentially even real estate in the future, and turning them into digital tokens that can be easily traded and managed on the blockchain.
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