What are the key takeaways from this Unchained episode?

Key insights include: **Crypto Revenue Growth Strategy:** Robinhood tripled crypto revenue year-over-year by adding more assets, launching staking in most US states, and focusing on advanced traders. The platform now serves over 26 million customers across multiple asset classes, enabling seamless movement between stocks and crypto without account transfers.; **Prediction Markets Infrastructure:** Robinhood launched a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to create a futures and derivatives exchange, providing backend optionality beyond Kalshi integration. This allows users to hedge specific events like AI trends without stock-picking risk, with contracts trading as low as three basis points for automated traders.; **Ethereum L2 Decision Rationale:** Robinhood chose to build an Ethereum Layer 2 instead of deploying on Solana to gain free security from Ethereum's decentralized network while maintaining customization control. This approach allows focus on financial system features rather than managing blockchain security infrastructure, with EVM compatibility enabling easy liquidity movement.

What did Johan Kherbrat discuss on Unchained?

Johan Kherbrat, Robinhood Crypto GM, explains how the company tripled crypto revenue in Q3, plans to expand prediction markets through a new derivatives exchange, and aims to democratize private equity access through tokenization technology. Key topics include: **Crypto Revenue Growth Strategy:** Robinhood tripled crypto revenue year-over-year by adding more assets, launching staking in most US states, and focusing on advanced traders. The platform now serves over 26 million customers across multiple asset classes, enabling seamless movement between stocks and crypto without account transfers.; **Prediction Markets Infrastructure:** Robinhood launched a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to create a futures and derivatives exchange, providing backend optionality beyond Kalshi integration. This allows users to hedge specific events like AI trends without stock-picking risk, with contracts trading as low as three basis points for automated traders..

How long is this episode of Unchained?

This episode is 60 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Unchained

Inside Robinhood's Big Super App Plan: ‘There's Still a Lot of Work to Be Done’ - Ep. 983

December 18, 2025

60 min episode · 2 min read

Johan Kherbrat

Episode

60 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Personal Finance, Investing

AI-Generated Summary

Published Dec 29, 2025

Key Takeaways

✓Crypto Revenue Growth Strategy: Robinhood tripled crypto revenue year-over-year by adding more assets, launching staking in most US states, and focusing on advanced traders. The platform now serves over 26 million customers across multiple asset classes, enabling seamless movement between stocks and crypto without account transfers.
✓Prediction Markets Infrastructure: Robinhood launched a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to create a futures and derivatives exchange, providing backend optionality beyond Kalshi integration. This allows users to hedge specific events like AI trends without stock-picking risk, with contracts trading as low as three basis points for automated traders.
✓Ethereum L2 Decision Rationale: Robinhood chose to build an Ethereum Layer 2 instead of deploying on Solana to gain free security from Ethereum's decentralized network while maintaining customization control. This approach allows focus on financial system features rather than managing blockchain security infrastructure, with EVM compatibility enabling easy liquidity movement.
✓Tokenized Stock Expansion: Robinhood built a proprietary tokenization engine supporting over 1,000 stock tokens in Europe with zero spread, zero fees, and only 10 basis point FX charges. The engine works for any asset class including real estate and art, enabling 24/7 trading and instant settlement versus traditional T+2 delays.
✓Private Equity Democratization Vision: Robinhood aims to tokenize private company equity, allowing retail investors to access seed and Series A rounds previously limited to VCs and high net worth individuals. Companies could raise capital on-chain, eliminating traditional IPO costs and banker fees while giving users ownership in products they actively use.

What It Covers

Johan Kherbrat, Robinhood Crypto GM, explains how the company tripled crypto revenue in Q3, plans to expand prediction markets through a new derivatives exchange, and aims to democratize private equity access through tokenization technology.

Key Questions Answered

•Crypto Revenue Growth Strategy: Robinhood tripled crypto revenue year-over-year by adding more assets, launching staking in most US states, and focusing on advanced traders. The platform now serves over 26 million customers across multiple asset classes, enabling seamless movement between stocks and crypto without account transfers.
•Prediction Markets Infrastructure: Robinhood launched a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to create a futures and derivatives exchange, providing backend optionality beyond Kalshi integration. This allows users to hedge specific events like AI trends without stock-picking risk, with contracts trading as low as three basis points for automated traders.
•Ethereum L2 Decision Rationale: Robinhood chose to build an Ethereum Layer 2 instead of deploying on Solana to gain free security from Ethereum's decentralized network while maintaining customization control. This approach allows focus on financial system features rather than managing blockchain security infrastructure, with EVM compatibility enabling easy liquidity movement.
•Tokenized Stock Expansion: Robinhood built a proprietary tokenization engine supporting over 1,000 stock tokens in Europe with zero spread, zero fees, and only 10 basis point FX charges. The engine works for any asset class including real estate and art, enabling 24/7 trading and instant settlement versus traditional T+2 delays.
•Private Equity Democratization Vision: Robinhood aims to tokenize private company equity, allowing retail investors to access seed and Series A rounds previously limited to VCs and high net worth individuals. Companies could raise capital on-chain, eliminating traditional IPO costs and banker fees while giving users ownership in products they actively use.

Notable Moment

Kherbrat revealed that when Robinhood joined the S&P 500, CEO Vlad Tenev barely acknowledged the milestone with a brief message about progress, immediately pushing the team to keep building features rather than celebrating the achievement that validated years of weathering regulatory storms.

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Episode Transcript

We think that in the future, tokenization kind of global everything else. The customer could have the same rights as an important VC or as someone who is 100 millions of dollars. And it could also give the same type of access to these companies. Clearly, still some work in progress to to be done. But but I really think that's where the the buck is going. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is an investment advice. The show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guest and I may hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures, visit unchainedcrypto.com. Looking to unlock your crypto's liquidity? Figur offers crypto backed loans with an industry low 8.91 fixed rate. They're the only major provider with decentralized MPC custody and new liquidation protection. Take out a loan at figuremarkets.co/unchained. Are you a builder who needs to add on chain trading to your product? The Uniswap trading API from Uniswap Labs offers plug and play access to some of the deepest liquidity in crypto. It's on chain execution at an enterprise level. More liquidity, less complexity. Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more. Today's guest is Johan Kherbrat, senior vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto. Welcome, Johan. Hey. Good to see you again. How are you? Nice to see you. I'm good. Good. Glad to have you. So for q three, Robinhood saw, quite a boost in earnings from the year prior, and crypto revenue tripled. Why do you think crypto revenue on Robinhood grew so much year over year? Yeah. I mean, it's been a it's been a great year. You're right. And, q three, was a great quarter for us. I think the combination of, you know, the environment, that just really popped in in crypto, but also, like, all the new features that we built around crypto. We added a lot more assets. We started to offer staking in most of the states in The US. And we also focused a lot on the administrator. And so I think that kind of resulted into this, growth that we've seen. But, really, I think it's also the interest from the retail, customers that have just grown in the past few years and especially last year. And Robinhood has had such a journey. I mean, you know, if you just think, like, Vlad and his cofounder, they they started as as young guys. Not not that they're, like, old by any stretch. But, you know, they kind of weathered the whole storm during the meme meme coin, mania, the GameStop mania. And then, you know, we saw the the very slick presentation you guys did introducing a bunch of crypto, you know, products over the summer. And now Robinhood is part of the S and P 500. And I wondered if you could just talk …

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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

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Tools

Kalshi
“Robinhood launched a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to create a futures and derivatives exchange, providing backend optionality beyond Kalshi integration.”

company

Uniswap Labs
“SPONSORS [{"name": "Uniswap Labs", "url": "https://hub.uniswap.org"}]”
Figur
“SPONSORS [{"name": "Figur", "url": "https://figuremarkets.co/unchained"}]”
Susquehanna International Group
“Robinhood launched a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to create a futures and derivatives exchange, providing backend optionality beyond Kalshi integration.”
Robinhood
“Johan Kherbrat, Robinhood Crypto GM, explains how the company tripled crypto revenue in Q3, plans to expand prediction markets through a new derivatives exchange, and aims to democratize private equity access through tokenization technology.”