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Johann Kerbrat - Robinhood's Crypto Comeback, Onboarding Retail & Tokenization
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Yo yo, yo, yo, yo, what is good? It is ThreadGun, and I'm back with a recorded episode. Today I am joined by Johan from Robinhood, who is making the rounds right now on the podcast circuit. Are you sick of doing these yet?
SPEAKER_01No, it's actually pretty fun. I love talking to the teams.
SPEAKER_02I know, I've enjoyed it. I've seen you on quite a few. You've had some really good ones. I uh I don't usually love the intro question, but you might be new to some faces on the YouTube, especially. Do you want to give us just a quick intro into uh who you are and what you're working on right now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I'm John. I lead the crypto business at Robin Hood. I've been at the company for more than five years, and before that, I worked on payments and crypto for a very long time. So um really excited about talking today about the Robin Hood chain, the Robin wallet, and everything that we're doing on crypto at Robin Hood.
SPEAKER_02I love it. Um thanks for being here. Also, shout out to Amit is Investing for setting this up. And also Quick Lore is I'm from Northern Virginia, and I know Vlad went to TJ, and so he's a Virginia, he's a local legend in um in my town. So shout out to Vlad as well. But I mean, I guess to start, right? Robin Hood Chain is live. You guys have really made a splash. I mean, I'm live every day talking crypto, drive my stocks, and doing a lot of on-chain stuff. And Robin Hood and Robin Hood Chain has just been like a topic of our stream every single day for the last definitely the last couple weeks, couple months here. I'm curious, like, how would you grade and think about the success of Robin Hood Chain so far? And like, what were your expectations, sort of like really making this push?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think we were pretty happy to see the engagement. Um, some stuff that we were not expecting was how many developers will be building on the chain right away. And and we've seen on Hell2s, for example, that Robinhood Chain was one of the most active on developer front. So that was really exciting. I think you know, we were expecting a lot of enthusiasm around a company like Robinhood, who was more on the traditional finance side of things, to get all in into crypto. Uh, but right now we're already looking about 10 years out, you know. Um, the the target is when the blockchain is going to replace a lot of our traditional system, not just like right now, the the usage that we are seeing, it's just the very beginning. So, still a lot of work to do. The teams are still cranking. You know, we we launched on July 1st. Uh, we saw about 360 million transactions so far, and the team is still working like it was day one, uh, really trying to make sure that we have all the ecosystem to support developers and also like all the use cases that our customers are looking for.
SPEAKER_02So, you know, Robin Hut kind of has this interesting story with crypto specifically, right? There's this like 2023 bear market, crypto's amassed, and there's sort of the infamous delisting of Solana and other assets. And it's funny how it plays out because we get into 2026, where you could argue crypto sentiment is as low as it's been in, I don't know, a long time, maybe since FTX, maybe worse than FTX. And Robinhood is like, you know what? Now, now is the time, right? We're gonna make the push and double down Robin Hood chain, double down on crypto. Like, can you sort of walk me through like the hero's journey progression of like how we got back to here with Robinhood taking crypto as serious as it is right now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I wouldn't say the sentiment is what has been driving some of these changes in strategy. If you think about it, we launched crypto at Robinhood in 2018, in the in the winter of 2018. So when everyone was saying that Bitcoin was dead, when you know all the NFT took a huge hit, all the the ERC20 as well, um, we still got the feedback from customers that they wanted to be able to uh trade and hold all this crypto asset. And so even if the sentiment sentiment was at the lowest, Robin would still launch crypto. So I wouldn't say the sentiment is what's driving us for strategy and and for roadmap prioritization. Um I think what happened in 23 was very different. You know, there was regulations uh that were uh not very clear, there was uh Wells notice being sent left and right, uh Robin also received one. Um and so we were also trying to protect the business as a whole and make sure that we are uh working with the regulator, the way that we've been working with them since uh the launch of the company. Uh we have licenses across the globe, um, and so for us it's very important that we um make sure that we work with regulator in a great uh way and make sure that we can still support our customer uh as a whole. But you know, the vision of the chain, uh the vision of tokenization, it's been multiple years in the in the making. Uh, Vlad published an op ed in the Washington Post um more than a year ago, explaining how tokenization is going to take over the financial system. Um, and and so that's really this vision that we've been working on for multiple years now. And really, right now, seeing the cycle, it's more for us uh a focus on building. What we've been doing is every time there's a bit of a down market, we we make sure that we build features that people are excited about. And when the market is coming back up, you know, people can actually utilize all the features that we build. Um, but the chain, the tokenization effort, all of that has been uh in the making for multiple years, and and we're really excited to start to finally see that happening. And you know, for example, we launch stock tokens on on our chain, we see millions of trading happening on weekends, things that are not possible using the traditional system. So that's the stuff that are really making us excited to keep going.
SPEAKER_02I think as someone that's so focused on crypto, it's not it's inspiring to see Robinhood do it now because you know, I think if you're really close to crypto and you spend a lot of time trading on chain and like interacting with perps and trading on lighter and trading on hyperliquid and like interacting with new primitives, you see that under the price there's real innovation happening. But I would argue that the macro tradable sentiment is is like really, really bad. And so I'm curious from your perspective, because you definitely have better eyes or different set of eyes on it than I do. Like, what is the broad perception of crypto like right now? But more importantly, like, how do you think Robin Hood's legitimacy can be used to leverage that into a more positive light? Like, how does that evolve?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I think the big difference that we're seeing between Robin Hood and some of the other chain and and and you know projects, um, one one to begin with, like we didn't launch a token without chain. And so for for us, the blockchain needs a technology, it's going to be the infrastructure that kind of uh support all of this new development that we are we're doing and all this new build that we're launching. And so we don't have as much of this like constant prioritization changes because we're trying to keep a token up or or or flat in terms of pricing. I think that's a distraction that we don't have, and it's a huge advantage for us as a company. The second thing is that we have this distribution. Uh we have 27 million funded accounts in in the US, we have 28 globally. Um, it makes a huge difference when we launch projects to actually have this influx of customers utilizing the blockchain. So we launch Robinhood Earn, which is our uh landing protocol uh with Morpho, where you can earn approximately 7% right now on your stablecoin. That's on the main app, right? So anyone using their Robinhood account, the 27 million funded account, can see this. And actually, when they interact with it, we will create a smart wallet for them. Uh, we will land directly their token into our vault on the chain. And so that makes it super easy for people to access this technology. They don't have to create a self-custody wallet with a private key and everything, like everything is done for them. Um, and the the third part is Robinhood has this massive business um with multiple market makers on the crypto side, but also on the traditional equity side. And so when we are building new projects, all these institutions are actually excited to work with us because they've been working with us for multiple years. Um, and so for us, it's actually a lot easier to bring legitimacy to product like the DeFi stock tokens, for example, where we have like major market makers behind to support it.
SPEAKER_02The Morpha thing is is crazy. I think people forget that. It's in the main that's in the main app.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it's in the main app. And and you know, we are introducing to millions of customers that haven't touched crypto before or blockchain technology before, um, directly into our chain. And they don't have to understand necessarily the the underlying part. The same way that you know when they send a text, when they send an email, they don't really understand the the protocol, they don't really care about it, they just want the email to be sent, right? Yeah, uh, and so it's the same thing here. Like they they get the benefit of the high yield that we can get on DeFi, and they also get the convenience of having it within the the main robin app.
SPEAKER_02How is adoption on that product so far? I know it's like very, very new.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's been it's been very good. Uh we we pass RTVL uh in I think we published around 275 million, and I think since then we we continue to grow. Uh it's one of the top vault already uh on the Morpho protocol. So we are we're pretty excited by by seeing the adoption. And I think you know it's just the beginning. I think a lot of people are going to try it and see how it works, and then slowly put more money into it. Uh, one thing that I think is really cool in the feature. I don't know if you tried it, but when you put money on it, it will automatically update every like few seconds. Uh and so you see your your money accumulating right away. So I find it I find it very cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, get those dopamine hits in. Yeah. So like I think the thing we've seen, at least narrative-wise, um, really with Robin Chain is the perspective of tokenized stocks, RWAs, and you know, in crypto, we've sort of distilled the narratives down. Like there is not that many things to get excited about, but the things that get excited about are potentially massive, right? Like perpetuals are map perpetuals, huge, huge, huge, huge idea. Tokenized stocks, RWAs. It's like a it's like a huge idea. And so it it we've sort of focused, I think, around these couple optimistic verticals that have infinite potential. And you know, a lot of ways I feel like the rhetoric around tokenized stocks is as optimistic as it could possibly be. But the metric show, it's not really happening yet, right? Like it everyone's talking about it everywhere you look, tokenization, Brian Chesky, CNBC, Bloomberg, everyone's like tokenization, never tokenization, tokenization, RWAs, RD RWAs, but the metric show, like it's glow-wing and it's up into the right, but it isn't like you know, there's these like everything is on-chain right now. Like, why do you think that is? Do you think um it's just early? Is it maybe a relatively niche sort of concept that isn't gonna eat everything? Like, why do you think metrics versus rhetoric is is separate?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think we're we're at the very beginning in my opinion. Um, if you think about the amount of people that just have a wallet to begin with, just interact on-chain, it's a very small portion compared to to the rest of the globe of the population. Um, and if you think about um tokenization of assets, there is still not a lot of them. So you have US stocks, NETF like us, where we we created a stock token that gives you exposure to it. We have uh about 200 that are available right now, but it's still a small amount compared to what's available on on Nasdaq and Nighty. Um, it's also hard to get other exchanges or private stock and things like that. So we're just at the early, early stage, but where I get excited about is saying the instance element piece. You know, if you think about what happened at Robin Hood with with Jamie, uh, this would have not been a problem if we had instance element where we didn't have to lock massive amounts of capital because you can just sell within a few minutes uh or even seconds on chain. Um the second piece is a 24-7 element. The market is moving during the weekend, like the world moves during the weekend, right? Uh you get news sometimes happening after hours on a Friday, and people have to wait Sunday evening or Monday morning to basically hedge their position. Um, you actually see a lot of our volume on stock tokens happens on the weekend. And that I think is a huge element as well, because now you can actually trade news, you can think about your portfolio uh when you're not working necessarily. Like, you know, I'm I'm working all day long, I don't necessarily have time to manage my portfolio. I I do it at night or I do it on the weekends. So that's the kind of thing that I get really excited about, and also fractionalization. Fractionalization is a huge element for Robinhood. Why we got uh successful at the beginning was allowing anyone to invest uh with as low as one dollar because not everyone can afford a share of Amazon right away or a share of Microsoft right away. And so all of that you get it by default on-chain. You get also other elements like transparency, decentralization, um, you will get better access, better latency, all these kind of things. So I think we're just at the beginning. It will take time to move the entire financial industry, right? Like we have to we have some hedge funds or some companies that are still using technology that was built 20 years ago. So to move them on-chain, you know, it's going to take some time. But the the idea for us is really how do we bring these values that I just mentioned, like 24-7, instant settlement, all of this to our customers without them necessarily having to worry about is it on chain, is it not on-chain? They just want to be able to trade the asset that they are looking for, and then we will optimize for the for the rail that makes the most sense for them.
SPEAKER_02It's crazy that GME couldn't have happened, like the Robinhood GME couldn't have happened with instant settlement tokenized. It would have been different. It would have at least been different. Yeah, yeah, that's wild. I'm curious, like, what do you think is a bigger market between like right? So when I think about the marginal user of the Robin Hood tokenized stocks, is it a bigger market for like Americans that are already on Robinhood that can now trade after hours, that can now trade on the weekends, or is it non-Americans that maybe don't have easy access to American stock market that can now potentially access via tokenized assets?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right now we've been focusing on on that latter point. Like the the people that are not necessarily able to access the US market. Um, if you look, for example, in in Europe, a lot of the brokers are still charging commission or still asking for a minimum before investing. Um, if you look in different countries in different parts of the world, going to a brokerage um, you know, in-house uh or a bank is actually pretty difficult. Like they don't necessarily have an easy access there. But most people now have access to internet and have access to a phone where they can have their wallet. Um so that's a type of market that we think they there is something to do there where really anyone can start thinking about investing and starting to build their portfolio and their wealth uh through tokenization. And I think you know, the more you are going to be able to add different types of assets from a different part of the world, or maybe private assets, or maybe real estate, the more you will see people slowly migrating into this tokenized RWAs and understanding the values of them.
SPEAKER_02And so in a more niche market, I'm trading on chain all the time, just paying attention to what's happening, experimentation. And you know, I know you're aware of what's you know, you're paying attention as well. And it seems like the first use case that I've had my hands on with tokenized stocks is like creating meme coins or some sort of on-chain asset and pairing them with these stocks. And some of these most of these things are niche, some of them have got a lot of traction. There's been some cool spots where like there was a you know GME GME, and because there wasn't that much of tokenized GME, the price went crazy, and people were like minting new shares and ARBing the price back and forth, and it just sort of creates this new um environment, if you will. And so I'm curious, like where do you see the evolution of tokenized stocks when it comes to being like composable with other protocols? Like, how experimental does it get? Is there anything that like you want to see get built that doesn't really exist yet? Like, how do you think that that plays out?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I see it as a primitive, a new primitive. So you talked about perps earlier. I think it's something that is really exciting for the crypto space. Uh, it was invented like 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and and now we are actually seeing more and more traditional systems starting to use perps. And I think that's a type of innovation we want to see. I think StarkToken is a perfect example where you can have this type of composability, using them as collateral in different places, uh, being able to create micro loans on top of it. Like there is so much to be done. Uh, we're just at the beginning. Right now, we're focusing on giving the primitive to people and developers, so giving access to these stock tokens. But I'm pretty excited to see what people are going to build on it. The meme coin pair, for example, is something that we didn't think about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh, where like people will put meme against uh stock tokens necessarily, but I think it's cool. You you can see premium, you can see arbitrage opportunities, you see liquidity coming in. Um, and I think that's the beauty of blockchain and crypto is that you have so many brains from across the world that are working together on building new things that they are creating stuff that we we never thought about. And um overall, you know, the idea that meme coin and RWAs are two different things are not really something that we're thinking about. We we build our chain to be optimized for very low latency, very fast bug time, um, also for cheap gas. And so obviously that works for both RWAs, but that also worked for meme coin trading and other type of assets that we are seeing on the chain. Uh, we also saw a major pair being creating more and more volume in the past couple of weeks. So, you know, it's it's all part of the process where liquidity has to come into the chain and it's starting to really um increase. I think the market cap has passed a billion on the chain already. So um then you need market maker, you need the the crypto native people, and you also need the non-crypto native people that we're trying to bring with with Robin Hood.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned I mentioned perps, you mentioned perps. Um, I'm a huge Lighter fan. I've had Vlad on the stream a couple times now. I think Lyder's an incredible product. I use Hyper Liquid all the time. I'm curious how you think about like integrating with Lighter versus building your own Robin Hood's like Robinhood Perpetuals versus like um a perpetual platform that is only on Robin, uh Robinhood Chain. Like, how do you think about working with Lighter versus doing it your own or working with someone that's only on Robinhood Chain?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, really for us the goal is always how do we get most of the value to the customer, how do we bring the best experience for the customer? And I think we could have built a lot of things ourselves uh on on the chain, we could have built our own decks, we could have been our own perps decks. Uh, but at some point we also have to understand prioritization and what are we really good at. And I think what Robin is really good at is creating unique user experience and very easy-to-use uh products, and partnering with some of his perps uh DEXs or spot Dexes or other platforms are just a great way for us to actually focus on what we do best. So we build the UI and UX on the Robin wallet to use a perps uh product, and it's it's pretty easy to use. I think you know, try it one day, you will see it's uh it's different from what we see on some other platform where it's more like web first and and pretty hard, in my opinion, to set all your order and your uh different parameters. And so we really focused on that aspect uh to make sure that it was one of the best, if not the best, UX and UI available for perps trading. Um and then the engine in the back is is powered by LIDAR, and you know, we have pretty fun things coming up on LIDAR on their points program um with the Robin wallet. So we're also pretty excited about that.
SPEAKER_02I'm excited to see what you guys do with like mobile perps, which is uh huge market that's fairly underexplored because obviously Robinhood mobile is like that's that's the experience. So I'm excited to see what you do there. How do you think about developers attracting developers into Robinhood Chain where you guys do have a lot of you know, even though crypto is sort of in sort of a downturn activity-wise, there are a lot of competitive places to go, right? Like Solana had a crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy run. Bayes is while it isn't you know the flashiest chain right now, it is Coinbase, and Coinbase is crypto in a lot of ways. Uh, and then there's Robinhood Chain amongst a few others. Like, how do you think about why somebody would come build their protocol on Robinhood Chain?
SPEAKER_01Uh I think you know what we did well was having a lot of partnership ready um for the launch of the chain. So we have multiple custody providers from Bitgo, Privy, Fireblocks, and other. We have multiple oracles, uh, chainlink is probably the one that we are uh the most um embedded with with all our stock tokens product. Um, like you said, we have multiple DEXs as well. We made sure that we had uh skills for AI development if you wanted to create your own wallet um with preview or trade directly on Uniswap with different skills. So all of this thing was done in a way to create the environment to support any developer and make sure that they have uh everything that they need basically to build on top of the chain. Um but the the the main reason that we see developers are excited about is they understand that the chain is not just a side project for Rabinode, and it's going to be core of our strategy. Like we we've been very vocal about the fact that it's in the main app. Uh, not just on our wallet, it's also on our wallet, but it's in the main app. Uh, we are using on some of the uh of the feature that we're currently launching. We want to do more with tokenization. Uh, we want to use basically the chain and our wallet as a way to expand internationally in 120 plus countries. So it's really core to our strategy, and I think uh a lot of developers are understanding that this will allow them to tap into the distribution that Robinhood is is going to bring into the chain, where like some of the other chains are more at the at the beginning of attracting um user and customers. So um, right now our goal is to make sure that we can support them. Um, you know, when people reached out, we are we're always trying to make sure that um they they get what they're looking for. And you know, based on the feedback that we're gonna get, we will also be able to improve the chain and make sure that we we build anything that is missing for them.
SPEAKER_02You know, on that side project point, uh it's a good call out. Like I think historically, exchanges that have had blockchains have run into this issue where they've never really formalized the relationship between like what is the exchange, what is the blockchain, how do we intertwine. I think the one that's probably done it the best is Binance. Like you have B and B Chain, and then you know, if you're like a token and is very successful on BNB Chain, you get you know listed on Binance Alpha, people like it on Binance Alpha, you eventually make it to the exchange, you sort of have this like vertical integration stack. I think the one that's gotten the most criticism was Coinbase because Coinbase launches Bayes and it's kind of unclear like what makes it to Coinbase, what does Coinbase want? How do the two things intertwine? What does this look like? And so I'm curious, um, like what is like the formal relationship between Robinhood Chain and Robin Hood, and how do you think about these things intertwining?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we we really see the chain as uh the infrastructure of tomorrow. So um, you know, a lot of the the system that we're using on all the we we have 13 different uh business lines of Robinhood that are making hundred million or more in revenue. Yeah, just to give you uh an idea of the variety of of businesses that we have from credit card, banking, brokerage, options. Um, and so for for us, a lot of the value that we see on the blockchain is not just this idea that you can transact using wallets and everything, but it's everything that we've talked about from instant sell and to transparency to uh better Rails for sending a wire, for example. Like uh when people are going to use banking, uh right now we're still using ACH and and some of the traditional system, but you could see a world where you know if if a Robinhood customer is is uh sending a wire across the world, they could benefit from crypto rails using stable coins because we will have uh faster delivery and also maybe cheaper FX, like this kind of things. So for us, the goal has really been um to make sure that the chain is not just going to be that side products like like I was mentioning, but also something that any team or any business across the company can tap into if they see like some value uh from it. And so that's where we are going to see it with tokenization in places where we're like, hey, it's actually too hard for us to offer the traditional bar card system, we were able to launch uh through our stock tokens product. Um, the earn product, instead of creating a landing program that is manual with a lot of middlemen, um, where everyone is taking a cut and therefore reducing the return, uh, we were able to launch it through the chain. So that's kind of the idea, and making sure that you know we're also supporting our developers. Uh, we recently listed one of the of the tokens that was first on the Robinhood chain. Um, so you know, we we are going to really make sure that the chain is part of the strategy at Robinhood. And you know, behind the scenes, uh, when we talk with Vlad and the rest of leadership, the chain is always part of the discussion. Like, where can we utilize the blockchain to actually bring um value to the customer and reduce the cost or uh improve the speed or this kind of things?
SPEAKER_02And I I guess to follow up on that, the Robinhood chain, like how does Robinhood handle the distinction between like what financial services are best on-chain versus off? Because like you know, off-chain, Robinhood can own the full stack and sort of have full control versus some of these products that are built on-chain, maybe they get a ton of activity and Robinhood doesn't get that much economic upside, but then you get the decentralization of like ideas and getting people to be able to build on top of it. And so there's like an argument to be made that Robinhood should just build and own every single product of the stack, right? Like own every dex, own the perp. It'd be the most economically viable, but then you would lose the network effects. And so it's obviously a uh a tightrope that you sort of have to pick. Like, how do you think about that? Like, what belongs on versus off versus owned by Robinhood versus sort of free market?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I will say when we work on the roadmap and when we work on new features and things like that, we we rarely think about how do we optimize for the best revenue outcome for the company. Um, obviously, sometimes we think about it, you know, we are we're still a for-profit company, we're still looking at how to make revenue, but we really have this core value where we call it customer-centric, where we want to put the customer at the center and really understand what is the pain point that they are having and how do we fix this. Um, and so when you do that, a lot of time you're actually going to make the decision very easy. Where um my my example around sending wire, right? Uh the customer pain point is going to be usually the fee for an exchange fee, and then the time that it takes for the wire to sell. If we can do the same thing using stable coin and make it cheaper to the customer, like there's absolutely no reason for us to not do it because people will actually come to Robinhood um to utilize our product because it's better than what they have on the competing product. So that's always kind of the concept that we have here, trying to get to product market fit first or trying to attract customers because of our better products, versus optimizing just for revenue. And I think you know it's it's been working pretty well for Robinhood. Like there's a ton of stuff that we haven't done internally. Like, for example, when you place uh a trade on Robin crypto and you buy crypto, um, we actually send it to multiple market makers. And the reason why we do that is to put the market makers in competition to drive the prices down of the crypto that you're buying. And the result of that is that we are one of the lowest costs to buy crypto in the US, for example. So that's the type of stuff that you know we are really trying to optimize. And we're always finding new ways to generate revenue on our side where you know, even if it's happening on the chain, and to your point, we may be losing some of the value to a perps decks or to a to a spot Dex, we also get sequencer fee on our side, even though we have a very low gas fee, we still get some of that that generates revenue. So um, you know, always trade-off, but for us, really the important is like what can benefit the customer and how do we make the product better for them.
SPEAKER_02And I guess on the point of the best product for the customer, like one of the last things I want to ask you about is Robinhood's onboarding sauce. Because this, you know, I'm 24, so I sort of was getting financially literate in the vertical era of Robin Hood, right? All my friends are on it, I'm on learning how to trade options in high school and whatnot. And I think um, in a lot of ways, Robinhood like invented the playbook or popularize the playbook for retail trading and getting normal people sort of literate with um financial products. And I'm curious, just as much as you can say about it, like what is that sauce? And the reason I ask is to the point of like, can that same sort of strategy work in crypto? Because there's there's always been this clashing and this idea we throw around of onboard retail, onboard retail. And it's like what what exactly does that mean? Like, is that a stock trader that is depositing money to earn yield into one of the morpho pools on Robinhood app, or is that like bringing somebody on chain to like trade meme coins? I don't entirely know what it means, but yeah, I'm curious how that onboarding sauce like works for as it relates to crypto.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I'm a lot older than you. So for me, like I didn't have the the same training, but um I didn't really learn about economy or about finance at school. Uh didn't learn it from my parents because they didn't really have any uh money uh to to really worry about. And so I think for us, the when I started to actually uh learn about it was actually when I opened my first Robinhood account in 2015, I think, or 2016. Um and you know, I put a little money on that, and then slowly I started to track the portfolio, I started to track the stocks, trying to understand the metrics, and more and more I I spent time on it, and then you know I was really hooked and spent my weekends learning about economy and finance. And I think that's what we need to do for a lot of folks. A lot of folks are just worried about just taking the first step, yeah. Um and and really understanding what finance can do. And that's the the sad part about it, because the earliest you start implementing some financial uh hygiene into your life, the more you're going to get the compounding effect until you retire. And that's where we're really trying to push Robinhood into, where um, you know, we have the the the Trump account now for your kids, if you if you just have a babies, uh, we have uh retirement account as well, we have the brokerage account, the joint account, all of these things to have a version of Robin Hood at every step of your life and every big milestone of your life. And that's what we are trying to do with crypto. Um I I've been in crypto since you know the the beginning 20 2010-ish. Um and I always felt it was made by engineers for engineers. So the first time you try to create a wallet and you have to authorize transactions, and if you authorize the wrong transaction, your wallet is drained, like this is not made for everyone. Um, and so when I joined Robinhood, the idea was how do we bring the 20 million plus customers that Robinhood had on-chain without them necessarily having to worry about all the chain complexities? So that's where I'm I'm really excited about the earn product that you mentioned, because a lot of people don't need to understand what is the blockchain, what is the Rayhood chain and Arbitrum and layer twos and everything. They just want to get the better product at the end of the day. And so I think for us that's what we're gonna try to do more and more, giving the education when you want to know more and learn more. Um, so for example, if you want to export your wallet from the Robin app using your own product, you can take the private key and utilize it on your MetaMask or whatever wallet that you want. But for most people, I don't think they are going to use this option, they're just happy with with it on Robinhood. And then, you know, more and more we will see that where some features may be using the Robin chain in the background, some features may not, and it's just to create the better product to the customer.
SPEAKER_02I like that the four developer, buy developers, four developers funny. I remember like 2021 when I was first onboarded, you know, really like 2021 when I was really trading crypto. I remember like having this conversation with my demand where I'm like, man, you know, ever grandma's gonna have a seed phrase and a meta and a MetaMask back in the day. And he's like, I'm gonna think so. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like it's get with the times or get left behind. But then you realize the times are sticky, they have their own way, and you actually you have to get with the times, not vice versa. Um, so yeah, man, it's really uh it's inspiring to see what what you guys are doing, and I really appreciate you come appreciate you coming on. I guess it's like a final question to sort of leave uh the audience with a little bit, is especially for like developers and people that are building stuff watching. Like, what do you what are you guys looking for? What does Robin Hood Chain want to see? What are you trying to push people to work on, or like what vertical to innovate, if you will? Like, what are you guys excited about and want to see more of?
SPEAKER_01Um, really, we're excited about everything that we've been seeing so far. So it's hard to to pick, uh, but you know, we I think there's still a lot of work to do on RWAs, on production markets, on banking rails, and and also on meme coins. You know, we've seen uh new launch pad being created on the meme sites, we've seen uh these pairs trading with RWAs and um more and more being created. So uh for for us, um we just want feedback, actually, to be honest. You know, tell us what's missing on the chain that um you need to develop the product that you're trying to launch, and and we'll try to make it happen.
SPEAKER_02Johan, it was awesome, man. And by the way, I think we all appreciate the podcast tour you're going on. You guys are active, you're listening, you're you're going on the shows. Um, hopefully we get to do a part two sometime, but man, congratulations to everything. Sounds good. And I'm looking forward to what you guys uh how you how you guys progress here.
SPEAKER_01Sounds good. Thanks for having me. Of course.
SPEAKER_02Thanks everyone for listening. I'll see you on the next one. I'm out. Peace.