Buying and selling platform Robinhood’s crypto income elevated 98% year-on-year to $160 million within the second quarter as CEO Vlad Tenev doubled down on plans to guide the real-world asset tokenization market within the US and overseas.
Whole internet income climbed 45% year-on-year to $989 million, whereas internet earnings elevated by 105% to $386 million, Robinhood said in its earnings assertion on Wednesday.
Regardless of beating Wall Avenue expectations, firm shares barely retraced in after-hours buying and selling.
Crypto volumes additionally elevated 32% within the quarter to $28 billion because the crypto market cap grew 21.7% to $3.36 trillion.
Robinhood needs to tokenize hard-to-reach different belongings
“We imagine tokenization is the largest innovation our business has seen up to now decade,” the CEO stated after Robinhood late final month rolled out a tokenization-focused layer 2 blockchain — Robinhood Chain — for inventory buying and selling in Europe.
Tenev stated Robinhood’s essential focus within the US market could be to tokenize different belongings that have been “beforehand inaccessible.”
“Non-public markets and associated real-world belongings are alternatives that don’t exist up till now,” and “we’re working with regulators to make that attainable.”
Tenev was referring to every thing from non-public shares and enterprise capital funds to actual property that has usually been off-limits to retail buyers as a consequence of regulatory and liquidity limitations.
It comes nearly two months after Robinhood’s $200 million acquisition of crypto exchange Bitstamp, which is about to play a pivotal position within the firm’s tokenization technique.
Robinhood’s tokenization choices have raised authorized issues
Tenev stated he has seen robust curiosity from builders desirous to tokenize firm belongings on Robinhood since unveiling the tokenization technique in Cannes, France, late final month:
“Since our occasion, we’ve simply received tons and plenty of calls from builders that both need to tokenize the shares of their very own firms or in any other case soar on the tokenization of real-world belongings revolution and associate with us.”
Robinhood has already issued non-public fairness tokens in Europe that resemble OpenAI and SpaceX shares.
Nevertheless, the tokenization choices lately sparked a legal inquiry in Lithuania, whereas OpenAI warned that Robinhood’s OpenAI token doesn’t resemble precise fairness within the firm.
Robinhood extra geared up for tokenization, CEO argues
Requested how Robinhood’s tokenization platform would outscale public blockchains, Tenev pointed to the corporate’s 25 million US customers and the $1 trillion in belongings that they already maintain beneath custody.
“[That] going to be very, very troublesome for others to copy,” Tenev stated, noting that none of Robinhood’s opponents or blockchain-native corporations are “actually going after this particular alternative.”
“There’s a whole lot of chains on the market that need to construct the perfect chain for degen merchants, however I feel the chance for real-world belongings and the distinctive traits that they’ve […] I don’t suppose anybody else is tackling as instantly.”
Associated: eToro to tokenize 100 most popular US stocks on Ethereum
Whereas Tenev’s feedback have been directed at layer 2s, Ethereum continues to dominate the crypto tokenization market, securing practically $7 billion value of real-world belongings, RWA.xyz data reveals.
Ethereum layer 2 ZKsync Period is available in second with $2.4 billion, accounting for a close to 19% market share.
Journal: Will Robinhood’s tokenized stocks REALLY take over the world? Pros and cons