Johann Kerbrat (Robinhood Crypto) - Robinhood Unveils Stock Tokens & Layer 2 Blockchain

[Music] Good morning everyone. Thank you for coming to see us Robin Hood. Uh so for the people that don't know us, um I'm John. I lead the crypto business at Robin Hood. Uh we are primarily a US company.

uh we have about 25 million customer in the US and we just had a bunch of very exciting announcement this week. So in case you missed it, we wanted to to come here and kind of uh present it to you guys and um you know also ask any well answer any question that you may have at some point. So yeah um on Monday we we hosted our first uh crypto event for for Robin Hood. It was also our first international event uh right here in K 10 minutes from here. Um, and it's uh it was it was very special uh for me especially because I I actually grew up here.

So the last time I was in this room, I was at the movie festival 15 years ago. So it's uh it's pretty funny to be on the other side. And um yeah, the the big news for us is that we unlaunch uh Robbie Crypto across the entire EU and EA. So if you're from the EU or if you're French, uh you can actually download the app right now. Um, and it's not going to be just crypto.

It's also going to be um, you know, stock tokens that I'm going to talk about. And so, we are really excited to be here and to be able to do this announcement um, in France and part of the ECC. Um, on Monday, we also had a great discussion with Vitalik, which I think is coming after. I'm sure that's why uh, you're also here. And so we we are really really excited to to be able to really uh get into crypto a lot more and start uh being a player here in in Europe.

So for tokenization we we introduced a new Robin Hood. So initially when we were in Europe it was just about crypto and now we're actually doing a lot more. Um so European will be able to uh trade crypto stake assets. That's you know pretty basic. I'm sure everyone can do that.

Um but they will also be able to access crypto perpetual future that I will show you a bit after and invest on um on chain and get exposure to the top US companies and an ETF 245. So that's really the the most exciting thing that we've done. Um it's commission free. There is no fees. Um the only thing that we we charge is a 10 basis point conversion rate when you go from euro to dollar.

So, we're really excited and you will get top exposure to, you know, the big names, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, and in the future, we'll start adding more and more assets from 200 that we have right now to 20,000. Um, and on top of that, these these tokens are actually available on chain. So, every every time you buy a stock, we are going to mint a token. It's going to be on the arbitrum chain at the beginning. Um and in the future we are going to launch Rabino chain which will also be based on on arbitrum but it will be really dedicated to the type of product that we are trying to to create the type of financial services that we have.

Uh we've been working with regulators quite a bit to make this product available and you know we wanted to make sure that the entire community could actually build on top of it instead of trying to cramp everything that we need to do on a on one smart contract. So, um it's going to be really exciting for us to to be able to do that. Um self-custody of the asset is going to be available pretty soon as well. Um when we were doing the presentation on Monday, we actually did a large transfer of uh of assets to show how it would work. And it's it's basically the same thing as if you were trading um on on any kind of self-custody wallet like Metam Mask or Coinbase wallet.

And the idea is really that in the future you don't need to have any reliance on any brokerage or any companies basically you can have everything on DeFi. You can transfer the assets and and do a lot more things. So really excited about this. Um and then the the next product that we did is uh perpetual futures for for cryptos. So we are launching on Bitcoin and ETH uh first and really one of the the main problem that we saw on Perpetual is it's really complicated to use um you know if you use a platform like Binance um IP liquid like these kind of things you really feel like you constantly have to update your take profit your stop-loss you always have to change the numbers constantly um and so you know when we were talking to our customers like we had this feeling that they really hated uh what they were doing um they had to basically be stuck at their desktop if they wanted to trade futures like it was difficult to do it on the go.

And so we we built this feature this um this new UX and UI that we really think is is probably the best one on the market at this point. And so you will have this slider on the on the left um on the at the top that you can move left to right and be able to see your your margin very quickly. Uh you will see how much of liquidity you can use at the same time. On the leverage side, you will be able to go from 1x to 3x. Um, you can of course uh, you know, cross the margin between your position and you can isolate it to one position.

And the the really cool thing that I invite you to test is to look at the ladder that we have to set your takeprofit and stop loss. You will be able to see the price of the let's say Ethereum in real time. It will move in front of you and you'll be able with a slider to to set your stop loss and and take profit. So um that's also something that you know we think is is really unique and and will give us a lot of um new ways to to build on on uh on perpetual features. And then um staking obviously that's something that I'm sure everyone here is is aware.

So it's finally live in the US. We actually had that in the EU for a very long time. Um and we offer a match as well. So if you're EU customer definitely try to to test it in the US. It's going to be the the first time that we are rolling it out to eligible customers.

Um it was one of the main uh requests from our customers. So we're excited to finally make it happen. Um I think you know for staking what we hear from customers that of course they want a reward. Uh obviously it never hurts but they also want to be able to help contribute to the network, help secure the network. And so we were um excited to give that and when uh Vitalik and AJ and I were on stage on on Monday, we were discussing about the the virtue of staking and the fact that you know we want a lot of people to st their assets but we also want a lot of people to actually use the the network.

So it's something that we we love to be able to give the option to to our customers. So um yeah, so that's kind of everything that we we announced the other day. Um and yeah wanted to to see if there was any any question in the audience. Yes. Uh I don't know if you want to mic.

So the question was do you see hyperlquid as your competition? Um I don't think it's the direct competition. Um you know you can do x on on hyperlquid you can do a lot of things. Uh but what we what we want to be able to do is give every type of customer that um you know is eligible and understand how uh per works and all these things. We want to give them interface that is a bit different on a fully regulated platform.

We have licenses here in the EU. Um and also being able to give them something that is very easy to use. So I invite you to try it. You will see it's uh it's it's pretty unique. uh we spend a lot of time with our designer to get the feedback loop with customers and make sure that we could update at all time the the system.

So it's it's going to be a fun one. Any other I have a question. I'm back here. Sorry. Sandy Carter from Unstoppable.

And I was just reading last week about Republic tokenizing stocks um for Open AI and Space X. I'm just curious, are you guys doing the same technique or are they different? Thank you. Yeah, they are not quite the same. Um if I remember correctly, Republic is doing a a reserve function.

So at this point, it's kind of a weight list. Um on our side what we're doing with stock token is that we are giving exposure to um you know the the different companies that uh I've see I've showed earlier and uh for for the specific token that you mentioned u at this point we are just offering it to hold and we don't offer uh buy and sell but for all the the public stock at this point you can uh buy sell and and u use it as as much as you want. question. Hi, I have a question here. Uh well, first of all, thanks for the presentation.

Uh do you have a more precise timeline on the self- custody for stocks and do you plan to make it fully transferable? If yes, will that be available globally? And how do you plan to overcome some regulatory restrictions? Yeah. So, um, when we were doing the presentation on on Monday, um, I could have actually brought it here, but we did a the full transfer on on the app.

Um, at this point, what we are going to roll out is the self-custody aspect, and then we we do plan to offer transfer in the future. Um, for us, the the the main regulation issue is going to be on the mint burn versus um, you know, the actual transfer. So, still still some work to do. Uh, but we think, you know, that's where the industry want to go. I think if we want to really bring adoption and and competition compared to the the current system.

I think what's really exciting also about stock token is really going to open the 247 aspect. So we have an exchange called Bitstam that we acquired and we we finished the acquisition a few weeks ago and you can imagine a world where Bitstam can support the stock tokens and we can have 247 and in the future of this exchange could actually be on on defy on any kind of platform that uh offer decentralized exchange. So um that's that's really the plan. Hi hello here I am I have a question. Yeah.

Oh, a couple of questions like the first one is uh are you using an external platform to tokenize the stocks or you built like a an internal one and the second one is who is providing the liquidity for uh for the stocks? I mean you closed like some partnership with market market makers or you are providing the liquidity by yourself. Yes. So um the token tokenization engine was really built uh by ourselves. Uh we build it from scratch.

We have a great engineering team. I think I've seen at least one engineer in the room. So, um you know the I think on this product to be honest the complexity is not so much on the coding like anyone can tokenize anything at this point. Uh it was more getting the right regulatory agreement and the right setup to to get enough liquidity and volume. So uh yeah tokenization engine is in house.

And then for for the second question uh when we source uh the stock when you buy a stock we source it on the market um it can be market makers NASDAQ NY you know exchanges and we buy it and at the same time we put it in custody and when we receive that stock in in custody we mint a token at the same time. Yes. Sorry. Um, uh, I, uh, Vlad from iPore Labs here. I just wanted to ask stock tokens.

Do you envis in envisage those as part of the, you know, the self self-custody part and management? Do you envision those being used as collateral in DeFi protocols? And do you plan to be involved in that process? Yeah, I mean I think for us what we what we think about stock stock token is that it opens a a bit of a new world and ideally we want to create a system that everyone can use not just Robin like we don't want this to be a a closed closed loop system. So um you know we expect that people will go and self- custody.

We expect that they will do a lot of things with it. I don't know if right now we're going to work on that collateral aspect but um you know if it exists why not and I think that's really the beauty of tokenizing this asset is that you could imagine a lot more use cases that currently we cannot do with our current system. So, oh, sorry. I just want to ask, so once you have that self custody available, will that mean that users will be able to transfer it to basically anyone they want to? I know that you already mentioned that you're working on like making it more beyond just like a user holds it in their wallet, but will that mean that users will eventually be able to access it without some kind of white list which would, you know, let them do basically any kind of like DeFi options or would it be a much more confined environment where it would be okay only certain users or certain platforms would be able to access stock tokens and do various things with them?

the the the ambition that we have is really to to be able to offer like this world where you can actually do what you want with with the asset. I think you know what we've seen in the in the past currently is that if you use a traditional system it's it's really difficult if you want to transfer broker to broker it takes days you sometimes months in Europe. I've I've just done it in France and it took me a month and a half to to receive the asset on the other side. Um and during this period of time the asset actually changed in in valuation. So, so our ambition is to to offer like the the real um you know an unlimited kind of transfer at some point.

And what about the secondary market when the when the off chain market is closed? Yeah, so currently it's 245. So meaning that um you can do it 24/7. Well, no, sorry. uh to at any time of the day during uh the week and it stop at the end of of Friday and start early uh at at the very end of of Sunday as well.

Um the goal for us is to be able to to open the the secondary market like I mentioned with some of our exchanges some some some of the market makers that will come into it and they will be able to actually create liquidity and volume on this. But but even today it's not open 245 the offchain market. Um well so we have a system that are connected to market makers that are doing like kind of this uh uh pricing after hours. So when the when the NY or NASDAQ close it actually goes to this market maker instead and we're able to do pricing. Yes.

My question is um thank you so much. It's amazing presentation uh and you're available in all countries European Union. What about Switzerland? when you are going to be on this market in which market uh about Switzerland you are not available in Switzerland and yes and there are a lot of people who would love to use this application for sure that's great feedback um we we are working on the Switzerland aspect so we got our licenses in the EU and EA um and and you know as you know Switzerland has different regulations so our plan is to get there at some point but uh not right Good. Well, thank you very very much.

Uh, I hope you enjoy the sun. Don't melt too much and see you soon. [Music]