Entering the crypto and stock battlefield, Robinhood wants to be the Nasdaq of the crypto world

The era of crypto and stocks is fully ignited. Last night, Robinhood, Kraken, and Bybit successively announced their deployment in the tokenization of U.S. stocks, officially declaring the breaking of the dimensional barrier between crypto and stock trading. Among them, Robinhood even launched a strategic combination of punches, directly leaping from an internet brokerage to an "all-around investment platform driven by crypto." At the press conference in Cannes, France, it high-profilely announced a new crypto strategic matrix: U.S. stock tokenized trading, Layer 2 public chain, credit card cashback for purchasing crypto, etc. As soon as the news came out, Robinhood's stock price rose by 12.77%, refreshing its historical high.

Robinhood VS xStocks

In the new wave of U.S. stock tokenization, two forces are quietly colliding: on the one hand, internet brokers represented by Robinhood are entering the crypto field, and on the other hand, crypto-native exchanges such as Kraken are deploying in the U.S. stock market in reverse. They are entering the "crypto-stock integration" track from two directions, competing for market dominance.

In terms of technology and market strategy, these two forces also show distinct differences. Robinhood chose Arbitrum as the token issuance chain and took the lead in supporting the EU market. In contrast, Kraken's xStocks is based on the Solana chain and targets non-U.S. retail customers, and currently does not cover many mainstream markets such as the EU. The following is a comparison of these two solutions:

This contest of crypto and stock trading is essentially a collision and integration of two ecological systems. Internet brokers rely on convenience and compliance advantages to attract traditional investors to enter the crypto field; crypto exchanges integrate traditional financial market resources to promote more open financial development. However, with the emergence of high-growth companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX with high-quality and substantial value tokenized assets, the market space for the original shitcoins and Meme coins may be compressed.

Robinhood's New Crypto Strategic Matrix

At the press conference, in addition to announcing the highlight of "U.S. stock tokenized trading," Robinhood also comprehensively outlined its new crypto strategic blueprint, formulating differentiated development paths for the EU and U.S. markets, and attempting to build a complete ecosystem from the trading end to the infrastructure.

The EU is the current core battlefield. Robinhood has expanded its services to cover 30 EU and European Economic Area countries, reaching over 400 million people. In addition to tokenized trading, Robinhood also launched crypto perpetual contract products simultaneously and directly announced that the European App will be transformed into an "all-around investment platform driven by crypto."

In the U.S. market, Robinhood is focusing on improving the supporting service system for crypto trading: opening ETH and SOL staking services; the Robinhood Gold credit card will support cashback for automatic crypto purchases; the AI investment assistant "Cortex" will also be launched to provide member users with token-level intelligent analysis and real-time market interpretation. In addition, U.S. users can now view and sell specific crypto assets by tax batch, realizing a more flexible tax optimization strategy.

The most strategic step is that Robinhood is developing its own Layer 2 blockchain. The public chain is built based on the Arbitrum technology stack and will carry the issuance, trading, and cross-chain bridging of all tokenized assets in the future, becoming the "landing point" and "engine" of the Robinhood crypto ecosystem. If the model works, the digital reconstruction of the entire trillion-dollar TradFi market, including bonds, futures, insurance, and real estate, will accelerate.

The following are the seven new optimizations announced by Robinhood:

Image source: @Phyrex_Ni

Why is Robinhood determined to "All in Crypto"?

Before announcing the new crypto strategy, Robinhood had already begun to pave the way for its on-chain deployment. In May and June 2025, the company successively acquired the Canadian compliant crypto platform WonderFi and the veteran exchange Bitstamp for $180 million and $200 million, respectively.

Robinhood's "all in" on crypto is not a temporary impulse, but a profound insight based on profit structure, market trends, and regulatory changes.

From a financial data perspective, crypto has become Robinhood's main source of income. In the first quarter of 2025, its total transaction revenue was $583 million, of which crypto trading contributed $252 million, exceeding the $240 million of options trading, accounting for as high as 43%.

In terms of profit margin, the crypto business also far leads. According to Zheng Di, a cutting-edge technology investor, crypto is already its most profitable business. The market-making rebate rate for crypto order flow is 45 times that of stocks and 4.5 times that of options. Robinhood can obtain an average rebate of about 0.35% per order, and the actual implied cost is 0.55%.

Importantly, this part of the income is not limited to the rebate itself, but also includes routing premiums and slippage gains. In addition, crypto brings new product possibilities to Robinhood, leaping from a platform for matching transactions to a provider of on-chain financial infrastructure.

For Robinhood, crypto is not only an accelerator of profits but also a path to the next round of financial dominance. What it is betting on is not just the change in asset form, but the reconstruction of the entire financial infrastructure.

U.S. stock tokenization may just be a stepping stone. The bigger picture is a new type of financial order that is based on the chain, open, and efficient.

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