From MEME stocks to on-chain stocks: Robinhood joins forces with Arbitrum to enter tokenized stocks, building its own Layer 2 blockchain to bet big on RWA

Robinhood, which once attracted a new generation of retail investors to trade MEME stocks during the "retail investors versus Wall Street" saga, has officially unveiled its cryptocurrency ambitions. As tokenized stocks become a new battleground in the crypto market, following in the footsteps of Coinbase and Kraken, Robinhood has officially announced the launch of tokenized stock trading, covering over 200 US stocks and ETFs, and launching an exclusive Layer 2 blockchain for $RWA based on Arbitrum. Affected by this news, as of the close of trading on June 30, Robinhood's stock price rose by more than 12.7% to $93.60, once hitting a record high. At the same time, the Arbitrum token $ARB saw a slight intraday correction, mainly because the previous benefits had been digested by the market in advance. Officially launching US stock tokenization in the EU and jointly developing an official L2 with Arbitrum. On the evening of June 30, at a press conference in Cannes, France, Robinhood announced that it will provide stock tokenization trading services to EU users. It now supports 24-hour, 5-day-a-week circulation trading of more than 200 US stock assets on the chain, including tokens for OpenAI and SpaceX, and plans to expand to thousands of types by the end of this year. Currently, Robinhood EU is giving away the first batch of private company stock tokens for free. If you are a Robinhood EU user and eligible, you can claim the tokens in the app until July 7. It is reported that the product only charges a 0.1% foreign exchange conversion fee to reduce the high intermediary costs for European investors to access the US market. In the future, users will be able to achieve self-custody of tokenized stocks and ETFs through Robinhood's crypto wallet, and can also choose a simplified operation experience without managing private keys. Not only that, Robinhood said it is developing its own Layer 2 blockchain designed specifically for $RWA based on Arbitrum, tentatively named Robinhood Chain, the availability of which depends on applicable regulations and future launch times. Johann Kerbrat, General Manager of Robinhood Crypto, said that the design of this new chain began several years ago, and is structured around $RWA, aiming to break the "walled garden" of traditional finance and achieve a more open and transparent asset trading experience. In fact, Robinhood's launch of stock token products has been foreshadowed for a long time. In May of this year, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, Robinhood is actively developing a platform based on blockchain technology that allows European retail investors to trade US tokenized stocks, thereby expanding its business layout in the European market. According to people familiar with the matter, the joint venture may be launched through cooperation with a digital asset company, and Arbitrum and Solana are vying to become partners in the project. Negotiations between the two parties are still in progress, and there is no final conclusion yet. In the same month, a Robinhood job posting also confirmed this business layout. The company is looking for a product manager to build a new crypto product architecture from scratch that supports cross-multi-chain expansion. The application for this position is now closed. In order to promote this business layout, Robinhood obtained a Lithuanian brokerage license in April this year, and obtained the qualification to provide investment services within the EU. At the same time, Robinhood acquired the established Cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp for $200 million, further consolidating its technology and compliance foundation in the European market. On the technical cooperation side, multiple signs have also shown that Arbitrum has become a core partner in Robinhood's tokenized stock project. For example, the Robinhood official website entrance and the Stylus technology promoted by Arbitrum appear together on the homepage of the Arbitrum Portal official website; Robinhood announced that it will release important crypto business at the Cannes EthCC conference, and will participate in a fireside chat with senior members of the Arbitrum development team. The market has already reacted to this positive news. The Arbitrum token $ARB has achieved double-digit gains recently, with a maximum increase of over 25% in the past 7 days. This is not the first cooperation between Robinhood and Arbitrum. As early as March last year, the Robinhood wallet announced the integration of Arbitrum to provide its users with improved token exchange services. It is worth mentioning that in addition to launching US stock tokenization products, Robinhood also announced a series of crypto asset functions at the same time, including that European users will be able to trade crypto perpetual contracts (without expiration date) supporting up to 3x leverage, and US users can stake ETH and $SOL in compliant regions. In addition, Robinhood will also launch a credit card that supports crypto cashback, a personalized AI assistant Robinhood Cortex, provide a temporary 1% reward for crypto deposits, and introduce a "tax batch" function to help users achieve better tax strategies when selling crypto assets. Tokenized stocks welcome more players, and Robinhood submits policy proposals calling for regulatory reform. In the past few months, many crypto institutions have regarded security tokenization as an important part of their strategic expansion. For example, Kraken has allowed non-US customers to trade stocks in token form, launching 60 tokenized US stocks in Europe, Latin America, Africa and other places; Coinbase is seeking SEC approval to launch tokenized stock services. If approved, it can carry out stock trading business and compete with other brokers; Gemini also announced a partnership with Dinari to launch tokenized stock trading services for EU users. The first supported asset is Strategy (MSTR), and more tokenized stocks and ETFs will continue to be launched in the future; Dinari, a startup company providing American stock trading services, has obtained a broker-dealer registration qualification for its subsidiary, making it the first tokenized stock platform in the United States to obtain such approval. For traditional brokerage firms that are deeply restricted by compliance and clearing systems, security tokenization is gradually leveraging the traditional landscape with its low threshold, flexibility, and composability. As Robinhood, which started with retail securities trading, has faced growth pressure in its traditional business in recent years, its zero-commission model for stock trading has been difficult to maintain its competitive advantage. For this reason, it has also started a diversified layout of crypto business and achieved good results. In the first quarter of this year, Robinhood's total revenue increased by 50% year-on-year, of which crypto business revenue doubled year-on-year to $252.00 million. The disruptive potential of tokenization is another crypto track that Robinhood is vying for. In fact, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has publicly and clearly expressed his support for security tokenization, saying that expanding retail investors' access to private market investment channels is one of the company's "most important policy priorities." In January of this year, Tenev pointed out in an article in The Washington Post that companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX are still private companies, and only a small group of wealthy insiders with channels and capital can enter the company in its early stages. The returns of these people are now often 1,000 times or more of their initial investment, while ordinary investors have no opportunity to participate at all. This investment gap is becoming increasingly serious - the number of listed companies in the United States today is only half of what it was in 1996. At the same time, the so-called "qualified investor rules" restrict most private equity investment opportunities to groups with net assets of more than $1.00 million and annual income of more than $200,000.00, excluding approximately 80% of American families. Tenev believes that what crypto technology truly provides is a fairer, more flexible, and more 21st-century-friendly financial system that will usher in the most inclusive investment revolution since stock trading moved from trading floors to electronic trading. This technology can flexibly split and distribute ownership, making it freely tradable like stocks, with only minor modifications to existing corporate equity legal documents. Once private companies are tokenized, ordinary investors can participate in the early stages of their development, instead of being allowed to enter after they are listed with valuations of hundreds of billions of dollars. Companies can then obtain crypto retail funds from around the world without sacrificing the regular governance mechanisms of private companies, such as employee stock options and share lock-ups. However, Tenev also admitted that the equity of private companies in the United States is currently regulated by the US SEC, but has not yet issued clear guidelines on how to legally issue and trade tokenized securities on crypto platforms. In contrast, the EU, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi have successively established complete regulatory frameworks to support security token offering (STO) and digital exchanges. He proposed that the United States should promote three key reforms to release the dividends of security tokenization: First, abolish the qualified investor system based on wealth thresholds. In an era where everyone can freely buy and sell MEME coins, measuring investment qualifications based on net worth is outdated and absurd. If a threshold must be set, it should be based on investment knowledge and risk self-assessment, rather than account balance; second, establish a "security token registration system" to provide small and medium-sized companies with new financing paths other than traditional IPOs, reducing costs and thresholds; third, provide clear compliance paths for crypto trading platforms inside and outside the United States, including centralized and decentralized exchanges, to ensure that they can legally and safely open security token trading to the public. It is worth mentioning that in May of this year, Robinhood submitted a 42-page policy proposal to the US SEC, including a nine-page comment letter on asset tokenization, calling for the establishment of the world's first federal regulatory framework for $RWA tokenization, and revealed that it will build the $RWA trading platform Robinhood $RWA Exchange based on Solana and Base. [PANews]