Robinhood's Plan to Bring Global Finance Onchain | Johann Kerbrat

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:00)
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Alright, everyone, welcome back to Empire. Very excited about this one. We've got the head of crypto at Robinhood, Johan. Johan, how are you doing, man?

**Johann Kerbrat** (0:14)
Good, how are you?

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:15)
Very good.

**Johann Kerbrat** (0:15)
Long time no see.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:16)
You've been busy.

**Johann Kerbrat** (0:17)
Yeah, it's been fun.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:19)
Yeah, I remember when was our last chat, DAS.

**Johann Kerbrat** (0:22)
Yeah, that's right.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:23)
And you're like, there's a lot of stuff coming. I can't fully tell you everything, but there's a lot coming.

**Johann Kerbrat** (0:28)
I didn't lie. There was a lot of stuff.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:29)
You did not. I've never known you to lie, man.
Tell me about the evolution of, I remember, so Vlad, I don't know if you were at Robinhood then, I would guess you were. Vlad gave a keynote at Permissionless, one of our conferences in 2022, I think it was in Palm Beach, and kind of announced, they're launching this crypto wallet. And that was for me like that. I mean, it was also our conference on bias, but I think of that as the moment Robinhood started really pushing. Can you just, maybe we start Macro with this and then go Micro. Tell me about just the evolution, like was there always this grand vision? Was it kind of like, let's do a V1, and then a V2, and a V3? Like tell me just the evolution of crypto internally at Robinhood.

**Johann Kerbrat** (1:09)
Yeah, I think the vision was always here. Initially, we started with this idea that customer should be able to access any type of financial instrument that they are excited about. So crypto was one of them back in 2018, and that's when we launched Bitcoin trading and Ethereum trading.
But then we felt that the blockchain technology and crypto technology were actually able to power a lot more than just trading of assets.
And we thought that it would be a great way for us to expand internationally, not just in the US, through crypto technology, because it's a lot easier to build. You can get access to a hundred of millions of people with just a wallet that people can manage themselves. And so that's where the vision started. We launched a wallet a few years ago, like you mentioned, it was purely crypto. And now we are starting to add what the real vision is, which is tokenized assets, being able to get yield on your assets as well, and doing more and more with your crypto. So the wallet is now live in 120 plus countries. We stochanized asset on it, our stock token product. And I think it's been a great way for us to really expand where Robinhood is basically.

**Jason Yanowitz** (2:19)
Yeah, I feel like you've been doing crypto stuff for, I guess you're right, 2018 is when you launched the spot tokens. But 2022, you launched the wallet. I feel like the Robinhood chain is you're like, you guys basically telling the industry like, we are here.
We are like a very real player in this game.

**Johann Kerbrat** (2:38)
Yeah, you know, I think we were always a real player. We are one of the largest US retail platform.
But I think the chain for us was not just a side project. I think what a lot of competitors have done is creating a chain just for the sake of it. What we wanted to create was this infrastructure and this backbone where we can build new products and we can bring to classic customers, retail customers, the benefit of the blockchain technology. And that's what we really wanted to do with this chain. So it's integrated within our main app. You can have the own product that I'm sure we'll discuss about directly on it. And it's using the chain to actually give the benefit to the customer, even though they're not necessarily DeFi or crypto people. Because I think the two worlds are converging more and more. And so we need to stop this question of DeFi, Tritify, we just need to bring everything to the customer and make sure that they get the benefit of it.

**Jason Yanowitz** (3:33)
Yeah, 100%. What is the actual benefit of doing all this stuff on chain?

**Johann Kerbrat** (3:39)
I think there's a lot of accessibility question. Being on chain, give us the possibilities that everyone can build on top of our chain is permissionless. We can connect to way more partners, equity providers, market makers, dexes, because it's all available to us. We don't need to create separate fixed line with every single market maker or every single partner on the chain.