Robinhood CEO Says Real-World Assets Will Drive Crypto’s Next Phase

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said crypto’s next growth phase will come from real-world assets moving onchain, sharpening the company’s tokenization pitch days after it unveiled a new suite of blockchain-based products.

“I believe that the future of crypto is in real-world assets,” Tenev said in a CNBC interview, drawing a line between productive tokenized assets and speculative tokens without underlying utility. “If an asset is not tied to an underlying utility, it’s not a productive asset.”

The comments came after Robinhood launched a broader onchain finance rollout built around Robinhood Chain, Stock Tokens, DeFi lending, perpetual futures and agentic trading. The company described Robinhood Chain as a Layer 2 network built for financial services and tokenized real-world assets.

Robinhood’s new Stock Tokens are available through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, subject to jurisdictional restrictions. Eligible users can trade tokenized exposure to stocks and ETFs around the clock, deploy those tokens into lending pools and use them as collateral across supported DeFi venues.

Tokenized Finance Moves Into Robinhood’s Core Strategy

Tenev’s argument puts tokenization at the center of Robinhood’s crypto strategy, not as a side product built for crypto-native users but as infrastructure for traditional markets moving onto blockchain rails.

“Everything that is running on traditional rails will eventually become on-chain, tokenized,” he said.

Robinhood’s July rollout follows the same logic. Stock Tokens offer economic exposure to underlying securities but do not give holders legal or beneficial rights in those securities. Classic Stock Tokens in Europe are derivative contracts between users and Robinhood Europe, while the new Stock Tokens are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets Jersey Limited.

That distinction is central to the product risk. Tokenized stocks can extend trading hours and make equity-linked exposure easier to move through wallets, but they are not the same as holding common shares directly. Robinhood’s disclosures state that Stock Tokens are not available in the U.S. or to U.S. persons, and remain restricted in several other jurisdictions.

Robinhood has also pushed tokenized assets deeper into trading infrastructure. Eligible users in selected jurisdictions can now access Lighter perpetual futures inside Robinhood Wallet, while European users are getting commodity, ETF and FX perpetuals with up to 10x leverage. The company’s new DeFi lending product lets eligible U.S. users lend USDG through a self-custody wallet using Morpho infrastructure.

RWA Race Expands Across Exchanges And Chains

Robinhood is moving into a market already drawing pressure from crypto exchanges, brokerages and tokenized-asset issuers. Kraken recently added selected xStocks as collateral for leveraged trading, turning tokenized equities from simple spot exposure into margin infrastructure.

Solana has also become one of the busiest tokenized-asset venues. Spot volume for tokenized assets on the network rose from $2.69 billion in Q1 to $5.7 billion in Q2, with xStocks-linked trading and Raydium liquidity helping push RWA activity to record levels.

The market is still early and legally uneven. Tokenized equities can differ by issuer, jurisdiction, redemption rights, custody model, shareholder rights and trading venue. That makes the product details more important than the broad tokenization label.

Robinhood is betting that those rails will become normal market infrastructure. Its latest product stack puts stock tokens, RWA-focused chain infrastructure, DeFi collateral, lending and perpetual futures into the same wallet-driven system.