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

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.