00:00I mean, what we really announced in the EU is first we're expanding and we're live now in 31 countries across the continent.
00:08And we're solving two things with our tokenized with our stock tokens.
00:13One is giving our EU customers exposure to U.S. equities, which is something which is one of the most requested features.
00:21The second is really demonstrating the beginnings of what we believe is the future of the financial system.
00:27We think that crypto and traditional finance will eventually fully merge and the technology will underpin any tradable asset.
00:37And you'll get the liquidity and the 24-7 trading of cryptocurrency applied to traditional assets, which I think is a very powerful thing.
00:47It's useful for public stocks and also private stocks, which we have the ability to tokenize as well.
00:54Now, you're developing your own blockchain to record transactions for tokenized stocks.
01:00What's the timeline for that to be rolled out?
01:03Yeah, that's right.
01:05Well, it's live today on Arbitrum.
01:08So we've been working with the folks on Arbitrum, which is an Ethereum layer two for the initial release of our stock tokens in Europe.
01:15But we have been working on our own chain, the Robinhood chain, and we've been hard at work.
01:22We'd like to have that powering the underlying infrastructure and all the DeFi elements.
01:28We want it to be the best chain optimized for real-world assets, which I think is an important niche that's missing in the market.
01:37And for that, it has to be secure.
01:40Basically, military-grade security has to be fast, low cost.
01:43So we felt like that didn't really exist.
01:46And so we're excited to bring that to market.
01:50I am curious, Vlad, about the idea of staking, particularly here in the U.S., obviously a program, I believe, starting today, if I have that correct.
01:58And also certainly some appetite for that amongst European investors.
02:02And I'm wondering how, if at all, those two elements in the U.S. and Europe would differ or be the same.
02:08Yeah, I mean, we announced a lot of new products.
02:13You mentioned staking, which has been live in the European Union for our customers here for many months.
02:22And it's actually been the number one most requested feature in the U.S.
02:26So now that's live.
02:27And I think it's two things that are interesting for staking.
02:31One is, from a practical standpoint, it allows holders in the U.S. to earn yield on their Ethereum and Solana and expanding to hopefully any stakeable asset in the future.
02:42But also, crypto is all about us coming together individually and collectively to secure the network and the blockchain.
02:50So the participant, the individual, is really the network.
02:54And staking allows that to be opened up to the millions of customers on Robinhood.
03:00So that's what makes it so exciting for us.
03:02I am curious, as we start to see this ecosystem, the broader crypto ecosystem evolve and, more importantly, expand.
03:09And you kind of pointed out in your previous response this idea that sort of the DeFi world and the traditional finance world are starting to overlap in that Venn diagram.
03:18And I am curious as to what your ambitions are for Robinhood.
03:22Is this a more of a move of a shift where that Venn diagram for Robinhood looks more like traditional finance or something in between?
03:32Yeah, two things.
03:35One is, I think this is the year and the time is now for crypto to move beyond Bitcoin and meme coins and introduce fundamental utility.
03:47And that's why we're most excited about tokenization of real world assets, real world assets with utility being live on blockchains and taking getting the benefit from everything that crypto technology has to offer.
04:01Sure. That's that's one to we think in the future, crypto and traditional financial services will fully merge and crypto will become the infrastructure layer behind all kinds of financial services from payments,
04:18which you're starting to see with stable coins to holding deposits, which has been the realm of traditional checking and savings accounts.
04:27So you'll have stable coins that pay interest in the future, including USDG, which is the stable coin that we've helped create.
04:34And then, of course, investments with tokenized private shares, equity stock tokens as well.
04:44What you're starting to see is the entire financial system being possible to build on on crypto technology.
04:54And, you know, what we can do is show what the world looks like if we rebuild Robinhood entirely on crypto technology.
05:01And I think that's what we're starting to demonstrate. Well, let's take a little bit of a step back here,
05:06because you have talked about how the U.S. is finally ready to catch up to the rest of the world when it comes to being a big player in the crypto world.
05:13But what needs to happen? What's the missing ingredient now for the U.S. to become the true backbone of the global financial system when it comes to incorporating crypto?
05:22Yeah, I think the bills that are making their way through Congress, the genius bill and the market structure bill are a great step in the right direction.
05:35As for tokenization, we actually believe that there doesn't need to be additional legislation.
05:42The SEC has the mandate, the authority to make tokenization of securities happen, and they're keen to do it.
05:49You know, they've hosted a roundtable. Our crypto GM, Johan, was a part of it on tokenization.
05:55And I think that it's going to happen in the not too distant future.
06:00Private companies require reform of the accreditation standards, which currently shut 80 plus percent of the population out.
06:07So that needs to be completely reformed. But there's actually appetite.
06:13Several members of Congress are interested in taking that on.
06:17And I believe we can make significant progress on reforming the accreditation standards as well.
06:24It's crazy that, you know, these companies like OpenAI and SpaceX can be worth hundreds of billions,
06:30can get so much appreciation in the private markets, and retail is essentially shut out from that.
06:35So that's something that we'd like to fix with our technology as well.
06:39All right. Well, you guys have already made a lot of progress toward that.
06:42Vlad, really appreciate you taking the time. Also love the suit there.
06:45I will let you get back to it fresh off the States.
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