00:00This is a great story that you've had. They launched their perps in Europe last week.
00:04Talk to us about how it seems like we're seeing a lot of brokers and TradFi bringing crypto more into
00:10their ecosystem.
00:10It feels like the past year we've seen the other way, but now we're seeing the reverse.
00:17Yeah, so crypto has always, I mean, Robinhood has always been quite active in crypto, right?
00:22They were one of the first traditional brokers, if you will, traditional for a fintech to get into crypto.
00:26And now they're moving into perps. So it's bringing normal asset classes to crypto investors.
00:33And part of it is because, you know, we've seen crypto a bit slumping over the past year.
00:38And so we've had traditional crypto investors want to diversify into other asset classes and also just retail traders.
00:44As Vlad was saying in the interview, it's an efficient way for crypto investors and retail investors to get into
00:49assets like oil and so get exposure.
00:51We saw when the war broke out, the Iran war, that people were going on hyperliquid and trying to bet
00:56because the market was closed.
00:57So part of it is also a way to get exposure to some of these assets 24-7, which is
01:01another interesting characteristic that crypto is bringing to traditional markets.
01:05Well, you touched on something that I've been wondering about, and that is who this is for.
01:09You mentioned crypto traders. You mentioned retail investors.
01:12Is that where people think it's going to go, mostly to retail, or is there an institutional use case for
01:19perps as well?
01:21So we've seen sort of bigger players look at perps for institutions.
01:26But with crypto, we always have to be wary when we're talking about institutions because it's not the size of
01:31institutions we imagine in traditional markets.
01:33It's always a bit smaller, right?
01:34But we're also seeing, you know, we're seeing, mostly in this case, Robinhood is known for being a broker for
01:41retail investors.
01:42So it will predominantly be for that, I think, in this instance.
01:45You did mention that perps surge in popularity during the Iran war.
01:49I mean, I remember in our team, we would check it over the weekend to see the movement of oil
01:52and gold and others.
01:54Crypto, meanwhile, has been a little subdued, especially when it comes to Bitcoin.
01:58How do you look at the balance between those two?
02:01I mean, I know they're not really apples and apples.
02:04They're more apples and oranges.
02:05But then is perps eventually maybe going to attract some of the traders and investors who used to be interested
02:12in crypto?
02:13I think we are seeing that, right?
02:15Obviously, retail tends to follow, you know, big returns.
02:18And crypto has not done well over the past year.
02:21And so, well, not years since October.
02:24And so perhaps they are looking at other investments and ones that they've not had access to.
02:29So you would see, you know, as I said, when the war started, people were moving and trying to invest
02:33into oil and they were going on platforms like Hyperliquid.
02:36Obviously, in that case, it would be retail investors because firms that trade oil would wait for Monday and trade
02:41the actual contracts and futures on oil.
02:44But it is interesting to see.
02:46It's a way to get a bit more diversified if you're a retail investor, I would imagine.
02:51And Anna, we have about a minute left here, but talk to us about the Robinhood specific story here, because
02:56as we mentioned, I mean, this is the perps rollout in Europe.
02:59As I understand it, they do have plans to launch crypto in the U.K. soon.
03:04So it's interesting that, you know, we saw perps come before crypto, at least when it comes to the U
03:09.K.
03:10So last week, this was part of a broad suite of announcements that they made that we highlighted the perps
03:17in Europe because that sort of follows the perps trend.
03:19But they also said they would expand their tokenized equities offering.
03:22They also got into DeFi, which is quite interesting because, you know, I would bring essentially would bring retail, mainstream
03:29retail investors into DeFi.
03:31They offered a product in the U.S. for customers to essentially get 7% on their dollars.
03:38They allow for customers to buy a stablecoin and then deposit that stablecoin and through Robinhood get into a decentralized
03:48lending protocol, which is called Morpho.
03:50And through that, then earn yield.
03:51So that would be another thing that they're getting into, which perhaps is not that normal for a mainstream broker
03:56is quite innovative.
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