Speaker 1: Fight back like the rest of the industry. You know,
Speaker 1: if it goes to the court, is Robinhood prepared to
Speaker 1: fight the SEC overall?
Speaker 2: What I would say to begin with is that we've
Speaker 2: been very disappointed when when we received the world's noticed.
Speaker 2: We were engaging with the SEC for many, many months,
Speaker 2: and you know, when the SEC chairman told the industry
Speaker 2: come in and register, we actually believed in it and
Speaker 2: we went there. We met with them more than fifteen times,
Speaker 2: and you know, we discussed with them to try to
Speaker 2: get there.
Speaker 1: Because this content is brought to you by v chain,
Speaker 1: which is a leading enterprise grade Layer one public blockchain
Speaker 1: spearheading a digital revolution from a sustainable, highly scalable smart
Speaker 1: contract platform. The v chain blockchain has many unique features,
Speaker 1: which makes it an ideal choice for Web three applications.
Speaker 1: V Chain is working with any great enterprises such as PWCGVONCI, BMW,
Speaker 1: and Walmart China. Most recently, they partnered with the Boston
Speaker 1: Consulting Group to build a revolutionary decentralized application ecosystem. I'm
Speaker 1: a big believer in this project. I have been since
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. I've been a VET token holder for years
Speaker 1: and this blockchain is highly scalable, great with security and speed,
Speaker 1: and it has low energy consumption. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: learn more about v chain, please visit vchain dot org.
Speaker 1: Link will be in a description. Welcome to the Thinking
Speaker 1: Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and with me
Speaker 1: today is Johan Kerbrat, who's the crypto general manager at Robinhood. Johan,
Speaker 1: great to have you.
Speaker 2: On, Thanks for having me. Always excited to Chaid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Johan, I'm very excited to speak with you because
Speaker 1: I've been a user of the Robinhood platform for years,
Speaker 1: even before you guys are offering crypto, and it's exciting
Speaker 1: that you've added a lot of crypto services and features.
Speaker 1: You're doing a lot of antioned and I got a
Speaker 1: lot of questions for you on your plans around that.
Speaker 1: But let's start with your background. Tell us about yourself.
Speaker 1: Where are you from and what's your professional background?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely so, I'm actually your original from France, so
Speaker 2: you will hear it from my accent. Always a bit
Speaker 2: difficult at the first few seconds to get used to it,
Speaker 2: but I'm used to it now, and so I grew
Speaker 2: up in a near nice it's in the southeast of France,
Speaker 2: and I'm an engineer by trade, so I've been an
Speaker 2: engineering leader for the past few years. And I joined
Speaker 2: robin Hood actually as a cito for Robbin and Crypto
Speaker 2: and so moved to the position of general manager a
Speaker 2: few years ago. And before robin Hood, I worked at
Speaker 2: a bunch of startups, including my own back in France
Speaker 2: and Airbnb as well, which was a good ride, I
Speaker 2: will say, in term of expansion and growth of the business.
Speaker 1: What was your first encounter with bitcoin and crypto and
Speaker 1: what was your aha moment?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, uh, the first company that I built when
Speaker 2: I was young and back in France was actually a
Speaker 2: company building payments rails and so you will you will
Speaker 2: use those services to receive or send money from from
Speaker 2: different businesses, accept cray cards, like all these kind of
Speaker 2: things that are very easy now to do with with
Speaker 2: Stripe and some of the system like this. But at
Speaker 2: the time a thing that we saw a lot was
Speaker 2: the fraud coming for merchant and you know the fact
Speaker 2: that you can pay with a credit card and then
Speaker 2: you have thirty days to to kind of charge back
Speaker 2: or issues like this that we're really making the world
Speaker 2: complicated for merchant. And at the same time, you know,
Speaker 2: crypto started to exist. A bitcoin white paper was here,
Speaker 2: uh and and we looked at it and we're like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is a is a solution and very cheap to
Speaker 2: send between merchants, very easy to accept it, and it's irressible.
Speaker 2: So if merchants send goods, you know, they don't have
Speaker 2: to worry about the fact that they might be a
Speaker 2: charge back in the future. So yeah, at the time,
Speaker 2: it was also like the economic crisis in the in
Speaker 2: the EU where there was a lot of discussion around
Speaker 2: the you know, the central banks and all these things.
Speaker 2: So really thought that this would be like the prime
Speaker 2: use case for something like goodcoin at the time. And
Speaker 2: if you look at it, I think it was not
Speaker 2: necessarily payments that was really the first use case and
Speaker 2: bitcoin was more useful for trading and as a reserve.
Speaker 2: But it's it's interesting to see the adoption of stable
Speaker 2: coin right now and see that, you know, we're going
Speaker 2: back a bit to the roots of the initial problem,
Speaker 2: which was payments.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, that's awesome, And I'm curious to get
Speaker 1: your thoughts on when do you think companies like Airbnb
Speaker 1: and Uber may start to integrate cryptocurrency payments using stable
Speaker 1: coins or maybe bitcoin, and also integrate blockchain maybe in
Speaker 1: their infrastructure and make things more efficient. I know there's
Speaker 1: some companies that have started highlighting and doing some trial
Speaker 1: and error testing, But when do you think we might
Speaker 1: see these big companies start to adopt this technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a great question because for some
Speaker 2: of this very global company, crypto actually solve a lot
Speaker 2: of the issues that they have with payments. So you know,
Speaker 2: in the US, we're very lucky to have a banking
Speaker 2: system that is very robust, that exists for many years,
Speaker 2: and payment system and rails that works very well. Craigcoud
Speaker 2: is one example that you know, in the US it's
Speaker 2: very easy to just pay with a credit card and
Speaker 2: tap and be done with it. But a lot of
Speaker 2: countries actually didn't go through the same growth and the
Speaker 2: same adoption of banking system and rails. For for some
Speaker 2: of these countries, you know, just having a banking account
Speaker 2: is not that easy, and you also have the issue
Speaker 2: with the local currency and the very inflation of some
Speaker 2: of some of these countries. So if you think about
Speaker 2: it right, the stable coin can be a solution for
Speaker 2: all that. You can have a stable coin, big back
Speaker 2: to USD or back to any kind of currency. Anyone
Speaker 2: can have a bank account. But I do think that
Speaker 2: the issue for some of his companies to adapt it
Speaker 2: is a regulation. You know, what kind of license do
Speaker 2: you need to be able to transmit currencies between customers?
Speaker 2: How do you look at you know, transaction motoring, you
Speaker 2: know m L these kind of things. That's all the
Speaker 2: things that you know a company like robbin it provides
Speaker 2: because we are in the space and we are like
Speaker 2: core to the to the space. But for a company
Speaker 2: where it's not necessarily like the the core product, it's
Speaker 2: bit more difficult to justify the initial investment. And so
Speaker 2: the tendency that we've seen in the past has been
Speaker 2: for this company to start using another company to provide
Speaker 2: these services, and so then with a number of middleman
Speaker 2: in between, it starts to be an expensive solution and
Speaker 2: we don't see a ton of adoption. But I think
Speaker 2: this is going to start changing the more like we
Speaker 2: are seeing some of his products like that are providing
Speaker 2: these services for low cost, and I think that's going
Speaker 2: to be something that we will see more and more.
Speaker 2: Robbing A, for example, offer a new product called robbing
Speaker 2: a connects that we launched last year where it's basically
Speaker 2: on our ramp, like you can use your robbing account
Speaker 2: or card or anything to buy crypto and transfer it
Speaker 2: right away to your wallet. And I think this is
Speaker 2: the kind of services that really makes it easy for
Speaker 2: merchants to adopt and start using.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, and you know, hopefully maybe in the next
Speaker 1: five year window start to see more adoption. But like
Speaker 1: you said, we need the clarity. There needs to be
Speaker 1: proper regulation, and I know in the United States there's
Speaker 1: some movement, but we're not there yet.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Now for those who may not know, give us an
Speaker 1: overview of all of Robinhood's crypto services and offerings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I'm going to try to be
Speaker 2: quick so you don't get bored. But I think we
Speaker 2: have a few different products because we are now a
Speaker 2: very global company. The main product that we offer is
Speaker 2: robbing and crypto in the US. Our mission is ready
Speaker 2: to make robbino the lowest cost and the most trusted
Speaker 2: place to translate with crypto. We offer the lowest cost
Speaker 2: to trade in our average you could get up to
Speaker 2: three point six percent more crypto and robbin UNIVERSUS some competito,
Speaker 2: and we have about fifteen assets on the platform. You
Speaker 2: can buy them, you can hold them, sell them, and
Speaker 2: you can transfer them if you're eligible to crypto deposit
Speaker 2: and transfer. And the thing that we've been building in
Speaker 2: the past few years has been giving the tools for
Speaker 2: people to invest and trade into the scryptocurrenc easily. So
Speaker 2: we of course offer recurring bikes if you want to
Speaker 2: do ADCA and you want to make a cost averaging
Speaker 2: trading strategy, but we also have a lot more advanced
Speaker 2: training tool, some advanced sharts, customer price alerts and things
Speaker 2: like that. So we've been really trying to push on
Speaker 2: serving all the customer segments that we have and making
Speaker 2: sure that we have everything that you need to trade crypto.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, we also launch in December
Speaker 2: in the EU, and so the the great thing there
Speaker 2: is that we've been trying to push a lot more adoption.
Speaker 2: So we we have an offer, for example, where you
Speaker 2: can trade bitcoin with zero fee, zero commission or anything
Speaker 2: like that. So we really have again like this low
Speaker 2: cost offering that we've been pushing on. We have about
Speaker 2: thirty five plus cryptocurrency there, so we we really try
Speaker 2: to add any currency that our customer we're asking for.
Speaker 2: And we also started to offer staking for Solana and
Speaker 2: it's been something that we've seen working very well with
Speaker 2: our customers. They are excited to be able to get
Speaker 2: yield generated from the earnings of the staking on top
Speaker 2: of their holdings, so that's been something that we rarely
Speaker 2: excited about. And finally, you know, we also offer an
Speaker 2: option if people don't want to use robin to custody
Speaker 2: the assets. We also have the Robbin wallet, which is
Speaker 2: a self custody wallet available in one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: plus countries, and you can store and manage your crypto
Speaker 2: on many network like we have from ethereum bitcoined to
Speaker 2: Optimism and base and Arbitrum and so on a network.
Speaker 2: So we've really been trying to offer the tools that
Speaker 2: you need and therefore, like we give the choice to
Speaker 2: the customer if they if they believe that, you know,
Speaker 2: they just want to hold on robin hood, we have
Speaker 2: top of art custody to make sure that they're found
Speaker 2: their safe. But if they also want to be self
Speaker 2: custudying and you know, playing a bit more with the
Speaker 2: website world, they can do it through the robin World.
Speaker 2: That's really great.
Speaker 1: And I love that you guys offer that self custodial
Speaker 1: wallet aspect because it shows that you believe in the
Speaker 1: ethos of crypto where if you want to self custody
Speaker 1: and be your own banks, so to speak, you buy
Speaker 1: your crypto on robinhood and move it to the self
Speaker 1: custody wallet. That's really great. So I appreciate you guys
Speaker 1: doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also been something where you know, I think
Speaker 2: the crypto world move at a pace that is so quick.
Speaker 2: If we wanted to implement everything in house, you know
Speaker 2: it will take it will take a massive amount of
Speaker 2: engineer and time to do it. And so really what
Speaker 2: we think that with the wallet, you can really have
Speaker 2: access to to everything that you're interested in, and you know,
Speaker 2: we are trying to make it in a way that
Speaker 2: you're not necessarily disrupted in your in your usage. So
Speaker 2: if you look at the robbin wallet, it's it has
Speaker 2: the same kind of best in class UX and uire
Speaker 2: is that that Rabbino is famous for. And so we've
Speaker 2: been really trying to spend time on making sure that
Speaker 2: people understand how to use it. We we also invested
Speaker 2: a lot in educational content to really try to help
Speaker 2: people understand like what are they doing? You know, Like
Speaker 2: sometimes a lot of the feedback that we get from
Speaker 2: customer is that that crypto is a bit intimidating and
Speaker 2: it's been made for for people that are a bit
Speaker 2: more technical, and so we are trying to remove this
Speaker 2: barrier one other time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Now, a few months back, you guys and
Speaker 1: now on such media an acquisition of the bitstamp exchange.
Speaker 1: And I remember using bitstamp in early days twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Was that to expand your EU footprint?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was also early bitston cu customer. So you know,
Speaker 2: you can can think that it's funny when you when
Speaker 2: you work on something like this, on a deal like this,
Speaker 2: and then you find your account from a back ten
Speaker 2: years ago. But yeah, so you know, the bit stamp
Speaker 2: acquisition is something that I'm really excited of about. And
Speaker 2: there's a few things that we looked at, and we
Speaker 2: we looked at to make sure that this was a
Speaker 2: great deal for the for the business. The first thing
Speaker 2: was the international expansion. Like you mentioned, bitstamp has fifty
Speaker 2: plus licenses across the globe from you know, the EU,
Speaker 2: the UK, Singapore and the US. So for us, that
Speaker 2: was a great step forward in our ambition to expand global,
Speaker 2: and we started to do that since since last year.
Speaker 2: The second thing was it's an exchange. You know, I
Speaker 2: think for for us, we've been really focused on offering
Speaker 2: a great marketplace like robin Hood doesn't match orders between customers,
Speaker 2: but we think there are some limitations with this flow
Speaker 2: and this UH mechanics, and and we think the exchange
Speaker 2: will allow us to actually offer more and more product,
Speaker 2: more and more advanced features for customers, but also support
Speaker 2: our expansion in in the in the future, like for example,
Speaker 2: when we think about organization and things like that. And
Speaker 2: the third thing was really the institutional business. You know,
Speaker 2: Rabinoud has been focused on retail for for a very
Speaker 2: long time. On the crypto side, we were huntirely retail
Speaker 2: focused until we launched Rabbino Connect, which is our on
Speaker 2: ramp or ramp, And you know, acquiring bits tamp actually
Speaker 2: give business that is already established, was already a long
Speaker 2: standing relationship with institutions, and so it's a great diversification
Speaker 2: of revenue for us and also a great diversification of
Speaker 2: product and offering and you know, the thing that we've
Speaker 2: been looking a lot at was Robinot has been a
Speaker 2: very safety first type of company when it comes to crypto.
Speaker 2: We've been you know, slower to add assets or to
Speaker 2: our for features and some of our competitor and the
Speaker 2: reason for that was really that we only wanted to
Speaker 2: offer of his features when we think that they are ready,
Speaker 2: when we are hundred person sure that you know, we
Speaker 2: went through all the checklists and it's ready for public.
Speaker 2: And so when we looked at Bitstam, we saw that
Speaker 2: they had like similar values. You know, there's been a
Speaker 2: very long standing exchange in twenty eleven and so it's
Speaker 2: even older than Rabinoe. And when you think about all
Speaker 2: the issues that initial crypto exchange I've been through, you know,
Speaker 2: being able to still be here, still be like a
Speaker 2: relevant player in the space really show that it's a
Speaker 2: it's a great team, and it's a great structure that
Speaker 2: we are acquiring as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And to your point, I think being here from
Speaker 1: multiple cycles, going through bull and Bear markets is a
Speaker 1: testament to the company's staying ability. So that's really great.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about how does Robinhood custody crypto assets. So
Speaker 1: aside from the self custody wallet that folks use, let's
Speaker 1: say folks are just leaving it in their Robinhood account,
Speaker 1: where do you custody the crypto assets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Robinhood you know, has been considering the assets
Speaker 2: for the customer. We've been building the kind of the
Speaker 2: safest product that we can around this. When you know,
Speaker 2: like back in the FTX days, for example, a lot
Speaker 2: of customer we're accompanying to us that they were saying like, hey,
Speaker 2: there's not enough future, there is not enough asset on
Speaker 2: the platform. And like I said earlier, like we were
Speaker 2: rarely focused on the safety first approach, so we didn't
Speaker 2: list hands of assets on the platform. We didn't you know,
Speaker 2: comming funds between firm and customers outside of you know
Speaker 2: operations for like a networking feel things like this. So
Speaker 2: our goal was really to build a custody that can
Speaker 2: support all the assets of our customer and we have
Speaker 2: a large amount and make sure that we have the
Speaker 2: best in class kind of rules for everything. So you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at our processes, for example, ninety five
Speaker 2: plus percent plus of the assets are stored in cool storage.
Speaker 2: No one person can move funds no, you need a
Speaker 2: you know, a group of leadership members to write list
Speaker 2: in a new address. So it's all this kind of
Speaker 2: rule that we put in place to make sure that
Speaker 2: you know things that we've seen with FTX, where you
Speaker 2: had one person that was able to move ons you
Speaker 2: you had firm assets and customer assets commingle, and so
Speaker 2: therefore it's very hard to distinguish what is what all
Speaker 2: of this thing is is not a concern for us,
Speaker 2: thanks thanks to all our processes.
Speaker 1: Basically, okay, so you guys have your own proprietary custody platform.
Speaker 1: You don't use an outside custodian.
Speaker 2: Right, No, we don't use an outset CONDI.
Speaker 1: Got it, got it. I'm curious about the dynamic of
Speaker 1: your stock and equities trading side of the business versus
Speaker 1: crypto because crypto is twenty four to seven and stocks
Speaker 1: and equities is an opening and closing bell and trades
Speaker 1: and so forth. It won't like if you put a
Speaker 1: trade in at midnight, it won't get executed till the
Speaker 1: morning and the market opens up and so forth. How
Speaker 1: has that change your business? And how are you guys
Speaker 1: handling the twenty four to seven aspect of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's one of the part that makes
Speaker 2: SCRPTO exciting in my opinion, is that we don't necessarily
Speaker 2: have these moments where there is a pose in the market,
Speaker 2: and so there's always something to watch. It's been something
Speaker 2: that you know, was really on top of our mind
Speaker 2: when we started to launch a business. We wanted to
Speaker 2: make sure that our operation team could work twenty four
Speaker 2: seven and and you know, we invested a lot in
Speaker 2: alouting system, manitoring system and so and our team itself
Speaker 2: to make sure that we always have coverage and we
Speaker 2: know what's what's going on in the market. But I think,
Speaker 2: you know, Crypto was probably the first one to do that,
Speaker 2: but I think equally easy slowly getting up to speed.
Speaker 2: Actually robinhood off for twenty four five trading, so it
Speaker 2: starts on the afternoon of Sunday and goes all the
Speaker 2: way to the next Friday for about does a different ticker,
Speaker 2: and so you know, slowly we are going to start
Speaker 2: seeing equities. I think catching up with this twenty four
Speaker 2: seven world. I think, you know, it doesn't make necessarily
Speaker 2: sense for people to be restricted on when they can trade,
Speaker 2: especially like people that have like a full time job,
Speaker 2: they don't necessarily have time to watch the market and
Speaker 2: see that it's closed when they can finally do something.
Speaker 2: So we've seen that coming from Robinoud, and we see
Speaker 2: some competitor now starting to also do it, and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, slowly, we'll be able to do more and
Speaker 2: more of these things. And I think that's where you
Speaker 2: know crypto and by crypto I also mean blockchain technologies.
Speaker 2: I've been really helpful because I think the the technology
Speaker 2: that is behind crypto is so much more powerful. It's
Speaker 2: software base, and when you think about very basic things
Speaker 2: like settlement or like all these issues that we are
Speaker 2: struggling with on the on the equities world, this is
Speaker 2: not an issue on crypto. And I think that's where
Speaker 2: the toganization will be very important and really can be
Speaker 2: a game changer for a lot of assets because with crypto,
Speaker 2: you get for free fractionalization, and you get for free
Speaker 2: twenty four seven, you get for free salment because everything
Speaker 2: can be automated and software based. So we're going to
Speaker 2: see I think a lot more of these convergence between
Speaker 2: the traditional finance space and the crypto space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's to your point of tokenization and tokenization of
Speaker 1: stocks and so forth. It's going to help bring that
Speaker 1: market into the twenty four to seven world. So great
Speaker 1: to hear that you guys are working on solutions like that.
Speaker 1: Another dynamic that I'm curious about. Obviously, you have bigcoin
Speaker 1: et aps now and etherio metfs issued by black Raft,
Speaker 1: Fideli and so forth. So you guys offer et apps
Speaker 1: on your platform, I'm curious, And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you notice at the top of your head are people
Speaker 1: buying more on the ETF side versus the actual crypto
Speaker 1: side of your business.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I have that on top of
Speaker 2: my head. I mean, I know for sure I don't
Speaker 2: have that on top of my head. But I think we,
Speaker 2: you know, for robbing the guys the way to give
Speaker 2: the choice to the customer. So I think I mentioned
Speaker 2: that earlier with the self custody versus the custodial aspect.
Speaker 2: I think we've done the same kind of approach for
Speaker 2: the ETF. So the next day the BTC ETF wire
Speaker 2: approved reallysted eleven of them. We did the same thing
Speaker 2: for ITVMTF. We listed them right after they were available,
Speaker 2: And I think the beauty of that is now that
Speaker 2: the customer has the choice. You know, they can use
Speaker 2: robbery crypto if they care about the underlying asset, if
Speaker 2: they want to have the options to transfer it. They
Speaker 2: also have a bit more control of the price because
Speaker 2: you know, they can decide when they go and at
Speaker 2: what price they go in the product. Or they can
Speaker 2: you know, use their procrage account to buy one of
Speaker 2: the TTF, or they can also use their retirement account
Speaker 2: that we offer to buy one of the ETF and
Speaker 2: therefore there will be like some tax advantage potentially if
Speaker 2: they if they trade with it. So you know, I
Speaker 2: think at the end of the day, for us, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter in my opinion, if we if we
Speaker 2: get a customer to buy bitcoins through our platform or
Speaker 2: through one of the ETFs. I think what's really important
Speaker 2: is uh to give the accessibility and and therefore, if
Speaker 2: some people are more comfortable with the ETF, you know,
Speaker 2: they can still get into the space and they can
Speaker 2: still get some education from from that activity. And and
Speaker 2: that's really something where you know, we'll I think we'll
Speaker 2: see more usage coming from the CTF because usually you
Speaker 2: just need to start, you know, getting into something a
Speaker 2: little bit and then you get a bit more curious,
Speaker 2: you learn a bit more, and then you get even
Speaker 2: more uh stuck into it. And I think that's how
Speaker 2: it started with me, you know, And I started to
Speaker 2: read the white paper and so slowly I was getting
Speaker 2: stuck into it. And I think we are, We're going
Speaker 2: to start seeing that with some of our customers as well.
Speaker 2: So I think overall, we we we are really happy
Speaker 2: with the fact that some of the CTF are made avaiable.
Speaker 2: It brings a bit more options to the customer and
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, you know, that's a
Speaker 2: good thing I think for the crypto space.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, well said. And you know there's different people
Speaker 1: in different walks of life, some who are more comfortable
Speaker 1: with the ETF rapper versus you know, the self custodial wallet.
Speaker 1: You know, I think about like my parents or older
Speaker 1: folks in my family, they'll probably want to go to
Speaker 1: the ETF route. Absolutely absolutely, And I'm curious how you
Speaker 1: guys are viewing the changing dynamic in investors. So a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One at social media allows people to crowdsource.
Speaker 1: It allows people to come together and say, hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna buy this token, We're gonna buy this talk you
Speaker 1: know example GameStop AMC. But now we're seeing it with
Speaker 1: mean coins. You know, there's been so many mean coins
Speaker 1: and so forth. How are you guys looking at the
Speaker 1: modern day investor and how the dynamic is changing with
Speaker 1: social media?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think overall, what we believe as
Speaker 2: a platform is that we should give to customer access
Speaker 2: to to the assets and coins a lot. So we're
Speaker 2: not necessarily in the business of deciding if if an
Speaker 2: asset is you know, right for the customer or not.
Speaker 2: Like if if I knew which which one to bet on,
Speaker 2: you know, I will I will probably have retired by now.
Speaker 2: But what we are doing as a platform is again
Speaker 2: like as a as a safety first company, what we
Speaker 2: want to make sure that we have a rigorous framework
Speaker 2: in place to help us evaluate the asset that we
Speaker 2: support on a platform. You know, we want to make
Speaker 2: sure that if we see brought an asset, we are
Speaker 2: able to, for example, safely settle with our liquor provider
Speaker 2: and market makers. We want to make sure that there
Speaker 2: is not like just one person that can change the
Speaker 2: contract or things you know that could potentially be a
Speaker 2: loss of funds for the customer. So we have a
Speaker 2: what we call listing committee. We look at many aspects
Speaker 2: of the assets, from operational to legal analysis, to technical
Speaker 2: analysis and security analysis, and we are going to make
Speaker 2: sure that this is safe for us to the asset
Speaker 2: on the platform and that there is no obvious problem
Speaker 2: that could come from it. But at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, you know, if we use the assets, we
Speaker 2: are hoping that the customer can can safely trade it
Speaker 2: and all these things, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: we do want the customer to do their own kind
Speaker 2: of research and make sure that this is the right
Speaker 2: investment for them. And that's why we also sometimes invest
Speaker 2: in some of our learn educational module to make sure
Speaker 2: that people have the time to read what is bitcoin?
Speaker 2: What is this? What is the difference of the between
Speaker 2: the two? Why does it even matter that you know
Speaker 2: there is a layer two? Like all of these things,
Speaker 2: you know, super easy answer for us are in the space,
Speaker 2: but for people that are new to the space, we
Speaker 2: want to make sure that they can actually understand why
Speaker 2: it matters and why we think that this is a
Speaker 2: good investment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Obviously there's some incredible changing dynamics and you know,
Speaker 1: I personally, you know, I'm not a big fan of
Speaker 1: meme coins, and I always warn people, look, you can invest,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's your right, but it's on the
Speaker 1: higher end of the risk curve.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and frankly, some of the main coin you
Speaker 2: know that started, they also fixed some of the issue,
Speaker 2: you know, some of the pines where for example, lowering
Speaker 2: the network fee when back in the days you had
Speaker 2: to pay like ten bucks to center transaction on bitcoin.
Speaker 2: So I wouldn't say all the min coins are exactly
Speaker 2: the same. I think some have real team behind it
Speaker 2: without developing and they just picked a funny name and
Speaker 2: a funny funny logo as a as a marketing solution.
Speaker 2: But I do think yet a lot of them are
Speaker 2: also not there for the long term and we have
Speaker 2: to be careful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about your thoughts on stable coins. We're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of stable coins enter the market. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the biggest is Tether USDT circles USDC. Second, PayPal launched
Speaker 1: your own. I think Ripple's going to launch one as well.
Speaker 1: How is Robinhood incorporating stable coins? Uh? And are you
Speaker 1: planning to launch your own at some point?
Speaker 2: Well? So, you know, I think for us, the main
Speaker 2: focus so far has been giving access. We we have
Speaker 2: a partnership with a Circle and so you can buy
Speaker 2: and sell U s d C on the platform on
Speaker 2: on the on the US platform for for free, like
Speaker 2: we don't charge any any kind of fee or anything,
Speaker 2: and you get one to one. So we we try
Speaker 2: to make it as easy as possible for you to
Speaker 2: get into the stable, to get off of the stable,
Speaker 2: and then you can transfer it on multiple network and
Speaker 2: the same thing with our with our wallet, we try
Speaker 2: to make it very easy to understand with us U
Speaker 2: s d C being front of the product. So you know,
Speaker 2: for us, we've been trying to focus on that. The
Speaker 2: main concern that I have with some of the stable
Speaker 2: coins out there is how you know guaranteed are the
Speaker 2: the reserve you know, is as a reserve really what
Speaker 2: the stable coin is? You know, are we taking risk
Speaker 2: behind it or not? And so I think for us
Speaker 2: that's been the main concern when we are looking at
Speaker 2: potentially disting a stable coin, and we want to make
Speaker 2: sure that, you know, if all customers are trying to
Speaker 2: redeem their USDC or whatever stable coin, they can get
Speaker 2: actually access to the cash and there is not going
Speaker 2: to be a risk of a deep bag or anything
Speaker 2: like that. But I think, you know, stableard grind stable
Speaker 2: coin has been like a huge traction for the world
Speaker 2: crypto world. I think a lot of cases that you're
Speaker 2: seeing people using crypto for has been stable because are
Speaker 2: able to send money easily. They are also able to
Speaker 2: use it as a safe event because they prefer to
Speaker 2: hold a stable coin versus something else like their local
Speaker 2: currency or something like that. So, you know, we think
Speaker 2: that giving access to it is very important in terms
Speaker 2: of us launching it. At this point, we have nothing
Speaker 2: to announce, but you know, if if we are planning
Speaker 2: to do it, I will make sure to come back here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I think it would absolutely make sense for
Speaker 1: robin For my opinion, it makes sense for robin Hood
Speaker 1: to do that. And your ecosystem is pretty big, you
Speaker 1: got a lot of customers you're expanding globally that that
Speaker 1: would work out pretty well. US back stable coin. Maybe
Speaker 1: in a eurobackstable coin I would use different. Yeah. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk a bit about like crypto regulations. Obviously in
Speaker 1: the United States we don't have the clarity. The SEC
Speaker 1: is sending wells notice to everybody. I know they sent
Speaker 1: one to you guys, coin based UNISWAP, my uncle, my aunt, right, everybody,
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of ridiculous at this point. You know,
Speaker 1: what's Robin Hood's outlook on this? And are you guys
Speaker 1: planning to fight back like the rest of the industry,
Speaker 1: you know, if it goes to the court, is Robinhood
Speaker 1: prepared to fight the SEC?
Speaker 2: Overall? What I would say to be to begin with
Speaker 2: is that we've we've been very disappointed when when we
Speaker 2: received the well's notice. We were engaging with the SEC
Speaker 2: for for many many months, and you know, when the
Speaker 2: SEC chairman told the industry come in and register, we
Speaker 2: actually believed in it and we went there. We met
Speaker 2: with them more than fifteen times, and you know, we
Speaker 2: discussed with them to try to get there because we
Speaker 2: as a company have been regulated from the beginning, right
Speaker 2: Like if you think about robin Hood, it's regulated by
Speaker 2: funeral Art, it's regulated by the SEC on the brokerage side,
Speaker 2: on the cryptic side, we have licenses across the US.
Speaker 2: So really, when you think about that, it's hard to
Speaker 2: imagine that we could not come in and register and
Speaker 2: get the right things in place to get there. So
Speaker 2: we were very disappointed. At the end of the day,
Speaker 2: you know, we felt like it was kind of something
Speaker 2: that every crypto company, if they start to be a
Speaker 2: big they are basically going to get one at this point,
Speaker 2: so it's it's becoming a bit of a weird situation.
Speaker 2: And yeah, we are definitely ready to, you know, keep
Speaker 2: pushing on this, like we want to keep pushing on
Speaker 2: the regulator to give access to crypto and make sure
Speaker 2: that we are going to be able to keep offer it.
Speaker 2: We think that crypto easier to stay, you know, So
Speaker 2: at this point we've been focusing on innovating and on
Speaker 2: pushing on our road map and at the same time
Speaker 2: we'll keep fighting for the cloudy that we need. The
Speaker 2: thing that is a bit you know, frustrating for me,
Speaker 2: especially as a as a French guy. So I'm European,
Speaker 2: and you know, when I moved here from from France,
Speaker 2: I moved in the US because really I felt like
Speaker 2: the US was top of class in terms of innovation,
Speaker 2: in terms of helping companies, especially technology call company like
Speaker 2: internet companies and all these things to get it upright
Speaker 2: and running very quickly and really be able to expand.
Speaker 2: And you know, it sounds like for some reason. On
Speaker 2: the crypto space, it's been the opposite, and you know,
Speaker 2: there have been a bunch of blockers. And if you
Speaker 2: look at the other side, the EU are starting to
Speaker 2: actually embrace crypto and they developed the Mega Framework that
Speaker 2: is going to be live in twenty twenty five. Really
Speaker 2: you know, helping companies to build in the space. And
Speaker 2: you know, regulation have their own issues. So not everything
Speaker 2: on the Mega Framework is amazing. I will you agree
Speaker 2: with that, but at the end of the day, the
Speaker 2: advantage at least is that there is something and that
Speaker 2: you can use this framework to understand what you can
Speaker 2: do or not do and how you can do it,
Speaker 2: you know, with that conform with the regulation. So I'm
Speaker 2: hoping you know that the US tax position and hopefully
Speaker 2: a favorable position, you know I right now, if you
Speaker 2: look at the world, they are like a bit of
Speaker 2: two classes. You have the countries like China for examples,
Speaker 2: that I've created a ban on crypto, and you have
Speaker 2: countries like the US where they actually created a framework.
Speaker 2: So I'm hoping that we get into the direction of
Speaker 2: the framework and that we will be getting clidys so
Speaker 2: that once and for all, like US, companies can strive
Speaker 2: in the business and we can offer safely to customer
Speaker 2: like the products that they want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well said, And I'm hoping twenty twenty five is
Speaker 1: a year we get something here in the US because
Speaker 1: this year the FIT twenty one bill made it out
Speaker 1: of the House. That was surprising that you know, a
Speaker 1: bunch of Democrats joined Republicans to get it done. So
Speaker 1: there seems to be some momentum. And you have presidential
Speaker 1: candidates like Donald Trump, Barkay Jr. You have been talking
Speaker 1: about crypto, they want to embrace it and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping fingers crossed that the Senate can get
Speaker 1: their version of the bill through early next year and
Speaker 1: exit that a president and becomes law. That would be
Speaker 1: really great.
Speaker 2: For absolutely absolutely agree. I think you know, at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, we and it's something in the
Speaker 2: crypto world where you know, a lot of the the
Speaker 2: decentralized world doesn't want any regulation or anything like this,
Speaker 2: and so we are not necessarily on the opposite side.
Speaker 2: But I think when you look at what happened in
Speaker 2: the past ten years on crypto, we also saw a
Speaker 2: lot of scam. We saw the FGX, we saw the
Speaker 2: mongogues and all these things. So having some regulation I
Speaker 2: think will prevent some of his issues. You know, having
Speaker 2: clear roles on custody, for example, is not a bad idea.
Speaker 2: Not becoming link funds between firm and customer. It sounds
Speaker 2: like not a bad idea either, you know, like this
Speaker 2: kind of basic thing that company like us are abiding
Speaker 2: because we think it's it's important. But you know, forcing
Speaker 2: some of the other companies not a bad idea. But
Speaker 2: I think, you know, hopefully twenty twenty five is a year,
Speaker 2: like you said.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. Now you mentioned Robin Hood's crypto roadmap,
Speaker 1: can you tell us a bit about what else is
Speaker 1: on your roadmap for the remainder of this year and
Speaker 1: if there's anything for let's take Q one twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I can't go super deep in
Speaker 2: the details until we announce things. But usually what we've
Speaker 2: been focusing on for the best couple of quarters, and
Speaker 2: what we're going to keep focusing on, is on the
Speaker 2: on the US side, really pushing on the user experience.
Speaker 2: You know, really want to make it more accessible, We
Speaker 2: want to make it more user friendly. So we've been
Speaker 2: helping a lot of some some of the customers to
Speaker 2: get into the space and apply the right trading strategy
Speaker 2: that they've been looking for. And in the EU, we're
Speaker 2: going to keep adding features. You know, it's still a
Speaker 2: new product. In the EU, we are not at the
Speaker 2: point where we can feel like, you know, we see
Speaker 2: is UH ready for for everybody. You know, we're still
Speaker 2: adding a lot of features, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: something that we're going to keep doing for for this
Speaker 2: year and and next year, and and really the goal
Speaker 2: for us at the end of the day is going
Speaker 2: to keep bridging the gap between crypto and stratify and
Speaker 2: and so I think robil is a very unique position there.
Speaker 2: You know, we have customers that are able to to
Speaker 2: trade the two different type of product, and we want
Speaker 2: to make sure that they can do it safely on
Speaker 2: the platform. I think the last really thing that we
Speaker 2: we can say on the on the U S side
Speaker 2: is we're going to keep trying to push for lowering
Speaker 2: our cost and making sure that we can offer the
Speaker 2: loways cost on the platform for UH for almost all
Speaker 2: the customers and making sure that it's available for everyone.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, are there plans? And I apologize, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I missed this or I didn't see this.
Speaker 1: Are you guys playing to do anything with NFTs? Eventually
Speaker 1: I know there's there isn't clarity there and we saw
Speaker 1: open Sea just got a wells notice as well. But
Speaker 1: once there's clarity, you know, are you planning to expand
Speaker 1: to NFTs? And not just from everybody, but let's say
Speaker 1: legit artists, right, people who even if it's like Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift was like I'm releasing one hundred NFTs with Robinhood
Speaker 1: list things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know it's definitely something we so so
Speaker 2: for any product that we have on the platform or
Speaker 2: for everything, we really look at customer feedback. So we
Speaker 2: have teams of user researcher that are going into the
Speaker 2: uh on on the ground and that are going to
Speaker 2: meet with customers and trying to understand what do you like,
Speaker 2: what do you not like about Robbinhood and then you know,
Speaker 2: at very very low level details, So they will go
Speaker 2: through some of the flow with customers and and try
Speaker 2: to see their reaction, try to see how they interact
Speaker 2: with the product, and and our goal is to really
Speaker 2: learn and understand what's missing, and that's how sometimes we
Speaker 2: make change in the in the products it's it's from
Speaker 2: this customer feedback loop that we were getting, and so
Speaker 2: NFT was something that was really requested a lot, not
Speaker 2: so much on Robbio Crypto itself, like the product, but
Speaker 2: on the wallet. You know a lot of people wanted
Speaker 2: to be able to go and open see and trade
Speaker 2: on open See or their NFT marketplace, and so that's
Speaker 2: why we we made it kind of a prime feature
Speaker 2: on the wallet and so you can have all your
Speaker 2: your n f T there, you can access all the
Speaker 2: marketplace there. We also did some partnership in the past.
Speaker 2: One one of them was fairly recently where you could
Speaker 2: meet and get an n f T for free on
Speaker 2: the platform, and we've seen a lot of engagement with it,
Speaker 2: so you know, definitely something that we love. I think
Speaker 2: NFT have a ton of future. Also, there is a
Speaker 2: there's a basic NFT that just do like you know,
Speaker 2: the the image or however I want to go is
Speaker 2: the art. But there are things where NFTR being used
Speaker 2: for a lot more like for access to concerts or
Speaker 2: things like that, and so I think for us it's
Speaker 2: going to be a pretty important part of ostrategy and
Speaker 2: making sure that you know, people can can do it
Speaker 2: if they want it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I'm excited for the future iteration and adoption of
Speaker 1: NFTs that I've been seeing folks at chain Link they're
Speaker 1: doing like dynamic n f ts, like for example, both
Speaker 1: take a house deed and it's turned into an n
Speaker 1: f T and then it gets updated automatically with changes
Speaker 1: on the land, changes to the house, you do maintenance.
Speaker 1: It's amazing the future potential for this technology and even
Speaker 1: just concert tickets some artists and how that can be
Speaker 1: used and include special perks and benefits, and then the
Speaker 1: secondary markets and so forth. It's pretty core doable stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, And I think the dynamic ones are
Speaker 2: really cool. One day months ago, so I saw one
Speaker 2: where it was a reflection of the stock market and
Speaker 2: it was changing based on you know, what was happening
Speaker 2: on the market, And you know, it's kind of cool
Speaker 2: to have heart that can change based on what's going
Speaker 2: on in the real world and it's not just something
Speaker 2: fixed in time. So I'm really excited about it. I
Speaker 2: think we will stop seeing a lot more. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think we saw a lot of disruption in the
Speaker 2: space as well. You know, from the original model from
Speaker 2: from Open Sea to what we are today, Like a
Speaker 2: lot of things have changed, and I think that's that's
Speaker 2: not going to stop anytime soon.
Speaker 1: I want to get your thoughts on bitcoin adoption because
Speaker 1: you've seen it, you know, from a while back, and
Speaker 1: we got et aps. Now we have companies putting it
Speaker 1: on their balance sheet as a reserve asset, right and
Speaker 1: this is happening globally. I think there's a Japanese company,
Speaker 1: Meta Planet. Obviously, you got micro Strategy year, Tesla SpaceX,
Speaker 1: and I know some smaller companies around the world are
Speaker 1: doing this. And then I'm hearing rumblings of energy companies.
Speaker 1: They want to mine bitcoin they can monetize the excess
Speaker 1: energy and wasted energy. You got El Salvador has made
Speaker 1: it a legal tender. You know, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on the future adoption? Are we going to see more
Speaker 1: of this? Are we going to see maybe central banks
Speaker 1: eventually hold bitcoin as they do gold as a reserve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think I think so many things
Speaker 2: can happen, so like you know, the reserve question, Like
Speaker 2: we even heard during the Bitcoin Nashville President Trump mentioning
Speaker 2: that it was thinking about creating one. So you know,
Speaker 2: I think it's it's something that can definitely happen. I'm
Speaker 2: a lot more interested into the innovation in the space.
Speaker 2: You know, what people are building with the lightning network.
Speaker 2: A lot of things that have been created there and
Speaker 2: I think can solve a lot of issues. Lightning technical
Speaker 2: implementation is still fairly complicated for a lot of companies
Speaker 2: to implement. But now you're starting to see startups really
Speaker 2: simplifying this and and kind of creating the raales for
Speaker 2: you and you don't have to deal with the channel
Speaker 2: concept of lightning and all these things. I think the
Speaker 2: energy one was also something that was very interested in.
Speaker 2: You know, there is always kind of this like bad
Speaker 2: reputation around bitcoin and crypto engineer around like the cost
Speaker 2: for for energy, even though that if you look at
Speaker 2: the most recent kind of analysis, it sounds like more
Speaker 2: than the majority of the of the mining energy is
Speaker 2: already clean energy. But I think if we can start
Speaker 2: looking at that to help offset some of the costs
Speaker 2: for these new energies, I think that's that's really interesting
Speaker 2: when you when you think about you know, solar production
Speaker 2: and wind production. A lot of times the issue is
Speaker 2: not so much into during the energy, but it's seemedto
Speaker 2: getting into it, into the grid, and oftentimes like either hope,
Speaker 2: we don't have the right connection system to put in place,
Speaker 2: or there is a very long list before you can
Speaker 2: connect your new wind or solar farm to the grid,
Speaker 2: and it will take you years before you can do that.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of projects are actually being can
Speaker 2: soled because of that reason. And so I think if
Speaker 2: we can use crypto to actually upset that and make
Speaker 2: it more profitable and push people into the space, that's
Speaker 2: a game changer for the planet. So definitely a big
Speaker 2: supporter of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I'm excited, you know, to see how Web
Speaker 1: three evolves, see how big one gets adopted. You know,
Speaker 1: I got in twenty sixteen and it was scary. It
Speaker 1: was no any you know, it wasn't news like this.
Speaker 1: It was more of the foot right of oh, this
Speaker 1: is all a scam, ponzi this and that. Now it's
Speaker 1: a completely different narrative. So I'm actually excited. It's like
Speaker 1: entering I don't know if you want to call it
Speaker 1: hyper bitcoinization and just mainstream adoption.
Speaker 2: So it's exciting times. I think mainstream adoption is the
Speaker 2: right word, you know, Like the fact that just the
Speaker 2: ETF the creation of the ETF when you think about it, right,
Speaker 2: like to your point twenty twelve sixteen, like people were
Speaker 2: still thinking it was a scam. Now you have this
Speaker 2: massive institution getting into the space. So I think it's
Speaker 2: it's a very different world. And that's kind of the
Speaker 2: beauty of blockchain technologies or crypto in general. It's been
Speaker 2: to see at the speed that things have been moving,
Speaker 2: Like the Bitcoin took a bit of a while before
Speaker 2: kind of breaking things, but then you started to see
Speaker 2: them and the adoption of new layers on ism and
Speaker 2: all this thing. It's been. It's been really exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. All right, Johanna, I got some wrap
Speaker 1: up questions there for you. First, if you could create
Speaker 1: your own metaverse, what would the team be?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good question. I love comic books, so
Speaker 2: I think I will create something ready to comic books
Speaker 2: and you can be your own kind of hero and
Speaker 2: build your own world around yourself.
Speaker 1: That's great, And so I grew up reading tons of
Speaker 1: comic books, X Men everything. Marvel had some DC as well,
Speaker 1: so I have to ask what's your favorite comic book?
Speaker 2: So I actually love some that are like European based,
Speaker 2: Belgian based, actually, but on the US world, I will say,
Speaker 2: like Spider Man was probably one of my favorites as well.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. Yeah, I'll let you know about this.
Speaker 1: I've been collecting some of the rare CGC graded comic
Speaker 1: books as like an investment because they grow in value,
Speaker 1: right if you have them in good grades. So I
Speaker 1: have some Spider Man, had some X Men and stuff
Speaker 1: like that I've been collecting over the years.
Speaker 2: Do you have a conversion of that as well to
Speaker 2: exchange or not yet?
Speaker 1: Not yet, but you know I'm looking at I seriously
Speaker 1: thought about that. You know, how can I tell you,
Speaker 1: you know, create a market on it?
Speaker 2: So absolutely, I think that's really like the real world.
Speaker 2: I said, it's all going to become part of the
Speaker 2: tumorrow type of trading. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to monetize some of these collectables. I
Speaker 1: have all right, rapid fire questions, favorite food, pro lasagna,
Speaker 1: favorite musician or band.
Speaker 2: That's too odd. That will really depends on my mood. Again,
Speaker 2: and someone will listen to everything from electro to metal
Speaker 2: to classical music, so it will it will already depend
Speaker 2: on the mood. Favorite movie I don't know as well.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of classic h that I really love.
Speaker 2: And also on the technical side, when I was like
Speaker 2: young and becoming an engineer, I watched some movie like
Speaker 2: Anti Trust and any things like that, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is so awesome to be a hacker and to
Speaker 2: be able to quickly go into building like new software.
Speaker 2: So yeah, anything like that. Nice favorite book probably twenty
Speaker 2: dozen leagues And there's a c a very old book
Speaker 2: from from back in the days. But when I was young,
Speaker 2: it was the first book I've read and made me
Speaker 2: think about science fiction and really gave me the love
Speaker 2: for science fiction and thinking about what's out there and
Speaker 2: get into that world.
Speaker 1: And when you're not working at Robinhood, what are you
Speaker 1: doing for fun?
Speaker 2: So I have a two year old now, so a
Speaker 2: lot of time just playing with him and building legos
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But something I love also is woodworking,
Speaker 2: So love to build things. As a as an engineer,
Speaker 2: you always write things on the screen, but being able
Speaker 2: to do it person and build something with your hand,
Speaker 2: it's really cool.
Speaker 1: M hmm, Johan, pleasure chatting with you. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: for the future updates around Robinhood. Like I said, I'm
Speaker 1: a user, so I'm keeping a close eye and I
Speaker 1: would love to have you back on you know, when
Speaker 1: you guys make the big announcements. But thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me anytimes.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. What's great