Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 710 Robinhood's Crypto State of the Union: What is Next with Head of Crypto Johann Kerbrat

Transcript

Ep. 710 Robinhood's Crypto State of the Union: What is Next with Head of Crypto Johann Kerbrat · CRYPTO 101

0:08
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, everyone, welcome back to the Crypto 101 podcast.
0:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We hope everyone is having a fantastic morning evening because no matter where you're coming in from, that you're certainly in the right place.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is gonna be an exciting one.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We are joined here by Johan Kerbratt.
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: He is the head of crypto over at Robin Hood.
0:28
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a familiar face, a friend of the podcast, and Robin Hood as a whole is a group that we talk about pretty frequently over here, whether you're in the communities, you're listening to the rundowns.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Heck, even if we're on some podcast, we like to reference what they're doing.
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They've been one of the big driving factors and forces pushing crypto forward and new and innovative ways.
0:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Joe Han, it's good to have you back.
0:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We appreciate you time.
0:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is also a very special episode because we have a special co-host on today.
1:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to be super producer to you joining us as well.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So both you guys, welcome.
1:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to be an exciting podcast.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, a good to see you.
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a while, so excited to be here.
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a lot has happened since we last added.
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's hard to believe.
1:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's been almost two years.
1:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were just catching up a little bit before the podcast started.
1:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll tell you what, a lot has changed in the last two years.
1:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Looking at Robin Hood's side, looking at crypto's side.
1:27
[SPEAKER_01]: all sorts of stuff going on.
1:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when you look at the tokenization efforts that you all have been making, you crypto assets, it's funny.
1:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I'm getting a new notification every week of, oh, those crypto has been added to my Robinhood access.
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Just lately, you know, you all have been talking about Robinhood chain and there's a lot of other things going on.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But there have been ups and downs.
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to talk about both ends of that during today's podcast, because while there
1:55
[SPEAKER_01]: the crypto industry over on your and his grown substantially as the whole business has.
2:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, more recently, I think crypto has been in a bit more of a slump and, you know, that has a facts on all kinds of crypto products, including what you've been doing over at Robinhood.
2:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So, got lots of good, maybe even some hard questions to go at you with you, but before we get too deep into it, again, it's been a while, can you just introduce yourself and really what you do over at Robinhood?
2:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so like you said, I'm John.
2:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I did the crypto business at Robinhood.
2:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been at the company for five years.
2:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Initially, John has an angelied for the crypto group, and then moved to the head position, a bit later,
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: in my carry here.
2:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, our focus is really everything related to crypto.
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So from the spot trading business, it requires the most familiar ways to the bitstamp product that we have now with the exchange and tokenization that we are doing in Europe.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: All of this is kind of in the groups that I manage and you know I'll go is to make sure that crypto is accessible for everybody and that we actually use blockchain and crypto technology overall to kind of grow and change the financial system so that it's a lot faster or a lot cheaper and a lot more accessible to everyone not just people that have access for example.
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's been cool because Robinhood originally started out as primarily just a traditional financial brokerage account where people could come in, they could trade stocks, you know, it was a bit different and innovative, you know, I guess this is a good kind of point to lean into where if you haven't heard about Robinhood, they are, you know, what I would say is one of the fastest growing and leading exchange or brokerages in the world, but the way that Robinhood became so popular is that you all said, how can we appeal,
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, to, I think the younger generations, how can we appeal to people that are more tech savvy and how can we kind of reinvent the way that brokerages are done and looked at and used.
4:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, one of the beautiful parts of this is that it's a much more user-friendly experience, specifically on like mobile devices, which is where I believe the bulk of the users are and have been, but you guys have been expanding over into the, the web browsers, um, through the legend software and programs.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been cool to see, again, I remember when I was way back.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it probably was at some point while I was still in college.
4:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys started adding crypto.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember, dogecoin was allowed for trading and Bitcoin and like Ethereum.
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's like a very, very few select cryptos and people could trade these things.
4:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's ballooned into a much more major part of the business.
4:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And it makes sense because crypto's grown into the trillions of dollars in total market cap here.
4:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we get tuned to the weeds, I want to give a quick little disclaimer because we're going to be talking about a lot of juicy information.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just feel like this is going to be one of those episodes where I need to throw it out there.
5:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So real quick, everyone, nothing that we say here is ever going to be financial advice.
5:08
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not your financial advisors.
5:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So do not take it as such.
5:11
[SPEAKER_01]: These are just our opinions.
5:12
[SPEAKER_01]: A couple of guys talking about what's going on here.
5:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's I think it's important to kind of let that be known before we begin, but let's just kick things off a high level about the market because for the past man six or so months crypto's been in a pretty
5:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Narlie, I would say bear market, right?
5:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Bitcoin's fallen from 120,000 down the 60,000 Ethereum is falling.
5:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about a 50% move down for Bitcoin.
5:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Ethereum, it's over 60% of the downside.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Salana's about 70% of the downside.
5:46
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of these altcoins can be at if not more than 70%.
5:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And people are, I think, a little bit frustrated, a little bit confused.
5:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They feel the pain.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like all sorts of maybe underperformed in relation to some of the, to some of the large caps.
6:03
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you make of what's going on right now and how are you looking at it?
6:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, I think it's a tough market for sure.
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been seeing that for a few months now.
6:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we've seen that before, like, you know, with cycles.
6:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I really necessarily believe in the four-year cycle that everyone talks about on Bitcoin.
6:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've seen these cycles where, you know, there is maybe a lack of trust after a big event.
6:30
[SPEAKER_00]: In that case, you know, following the 10-10 events where, you know, a lot of derivatives platform at issues and certainly the price really move quickly.
6:39
[SPEAKER_00]: That's since then that we've seen this issue with a bit more of a bear market.
6:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, for us, what we think about it is just to focus on the same thing that we've been focusing for the past five plus years is, you know, building the tools that our customer can use to trade either on the on on this current market or in the future next wave and basically just focusing on making sure that we will have all the future that they will want when, you know, the wave come back.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, based on that, we'll see what happened, but overall, what we've been seeing from this market is just like there's a bit of doubts, you know, it's also a pretty complicated market with all the micro environment, you know, what happened this weekend again.
7:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think people are just not quite sure where to invest yet, and you know, if crypto is a right place, and it's certainly for them.
7:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, on our side for us, it's just going to be a big focus on buildings or right tools, basically.
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And like you're still doing that, which I think is good.
7:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're still focused on building the right tools.
7:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We always have maybe a little bit of a cheesy saying over here in crypto, but the bear market is a really builders market.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where a lot of the big work gets done.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I know Robin Hood has made some big bets on crypto, you know, kind of leaning into the second half of last year.
8:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of excitement.
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I still think there is a lot of excitement on it, but given how the market has shifted, maybe over the last six months or so, does any of that change it all
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think that's really the beauty of Robinhood, and initially, before I joined Robinhood, I was hesitating a bit to your point, you know, it was mostly a brokerage platform, and I was like, you know, are they really going to be serious about crypto?
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you think about the story of crypto at Robinhood, you know, it started in 2018, in one of the biggest bear market, actually, where, you know, everyone thought that Bitcoin and Ethereum, and everything was dead forever.
8:46
[SPEAKER_00]: The companies, the founders, actually believed in it, they believe in the idea of bringing accessibility to all type of asset to the customers and giving the choice to the customer at the end of the day to invest in what they think is proper for their portfolio.
9:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, that is kind of the same spirit that we have during this lower market.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't even changed our roadmap at all since, you know, last year.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We are just focusing on shaping what we've been announcing last year at the June event.
9:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So everything around tokenization, for example, we've been expanding from 200 stock tokens that we announced initially in June.
9:29
[SPEAKER_00]: in Europe.
9:30
[SPEAKER_00]: People are pretty excited about having more diversity of assets.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been launching our Robinhood chain test net.
9:39
[SPEAKER_00]: We've also been focusing on advanced feature for traders.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you can trade on Robinhood for as low as three-basis point if you use our or smart-tech exchange routing service.
9:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, all these products that we've been really pushing on in the past few months, we are still working on it, and we have a lot more to come on the crypto side.
9:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we are going to take that period of time where it's maybe a bit more quiet on the on the tech side where, you know, there is a lot less maybe a query per second and all these things to actually focus on the foundation that we can build and when the next wave of big advanced advanced radios are coming or big volumes are coming will be ready for it.
10:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's funny a second ago, you were like, talk about how you're almost nervous to join or you're like, you know, this is primarily a traditional financial kind of stock brokerage platform.
10:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe that that was a hesitation for you.
10:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I always go through
10:38
[SPEAKER_01]: all of Robin Hood's earnings calls, and I was looking at the past couple quarters and crypto represents about a fifth, about 20% of Robin Hood's total revenue.
10:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you said, you know, you join this thing and it was basically nothing.
10:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it represents around a fifth that some quarters pushing a quarter of all of the revenue over there.
10:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how do you build something like that up?
11:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is,
11:03
[SPEAKER_01]: just a gigantic company, and now it's pushing around the fifth of the overall revenue, what have been the biggest factors to kind of get you from nothing to everything, from 0 to 100.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of things that have been depending on just the beauty of Robinhood and the foundation that we were able to use to actually build the crypto business on.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, initially the first few years, we had some chance with, for example, listing nodes for your point where we saw a lot of volume in 2021.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also, I think, need to give a lot of credit to the CEO of the company blood and Esco founder as well, where for a long time they're just believing in this idea that we need to remove barrier to entry for people to access the markets, not just crypto markets, but any market.
11:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you think about the investor on Robinhood, a very large portion of them are brand new to investing.
12:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's the UI, the UX, the education tools, and all the systems that we're building are helping with is that basically we're removing this idea that investing and directing your finance is too complicated.
12:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not for you.
12:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It should be just done by the financial advisor.
12:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, we are giving you the power to make the decision for yourself.
12:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And so slowly what you see is people
12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: starting with a little bit, testing the water a little bit, you know, trying to understand what's going on.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And then slowly putting more and more of their own finance.
12:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that happened for me as well.
12:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I opened my Robinhood account when more than 10 years ago, I think now, and I was just moving into the US.
12:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, this is awesome.
12:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I can actually self direct my investment.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to talk to a banker.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to pick up the phone, you know, and one of these, like,
12:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Guy, who hates picking up a phone to talk about, you know, just your financial advice advisor.
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think that's been really one of the key factors that help us really build on top of, you know, the entire brokerage that we had, brand new crypto business.
13:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But the other thing is there was a strong belief from the funders that we should invest into the technology and I think it's a big differentiator from some of our competitors where you saw some of them, you know, they launched crypto business and they shut it down in 2021, then they launched it again and that just creates the
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: one difficulties for them to build on top of it because they don't have that time to actually build a foundation and really build all the features that are around it.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So what they do usually they use a third party so you have a lot of limitation on top of features in terms of cost and all these kind of things.
13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And two, it also doesn't allow the team to work on more than just the trading aspect.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think for us having this strong support from the CEO and making sure that crypto is always something that we think about has been the right push to put us in that seat.
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I think last year what was exciting for us is that
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: For the first time, we were really pushing and using crypto for not just trading of assets.
14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We launched taking, for example, we launched the tokenized assets for stock tokens.
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have all these US stocks and ETFs that are now tokenized.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's really also exciting for our team.
14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Because for the first time, we use the crypto technology for more than...
14:37
[SPEAKER_00]: just to create the world, but we are actually improving the traditional finance system by bringing all the innovation of blockchain.
14:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So transparency, fractionalization by default, instance element, all this thing that are still missing right now in the tri-fi market.
14:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they are, and you mentioned a couple of different products in there and we're going to get into a couple of those as we kind of move on one of the thoughts that I had as you are going through those and you made the reference that like other companies have tried to do this, some of them close it down, some of them keep it up, one of the trends that we've noticed is that it feels like Robin Hood has been a trendsetter and not just crypto, but I think in the average brokerage experience.
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: What we often see, and this isn't just to glaze, but this has actually been something that we talk about on other podcasts or rundowns and some of our other communities.
15:34
[SPEAKER_01]: is that you all will launch something, and then it feels like maybe a couple months later, maybe a year or so later, you see another brokerage try to do it, whether it's different crypto features, or whatever it may be.
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all of a sudden it comes, and it's like, hey, you guys are tokenizing stocks.
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's been like one of the great examples.
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: As you guys have come out as a primary brokerage account and said, we're gonna do this.
15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You have thousands of them that are across and available throughout Europe.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You talk about creating your own chain, you know, doing a lot of other tokenization work over there and then you start seeing other other brokerage and maybe competitors there I say do it as well.
16:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that ever get like brush grading?
16:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you ever like look to the team in the background and you're like, these guys are doing it again.
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, I think it's, uh, it's an interesting one.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We, we don't necessarily spend a lot of time at looking what the other, uh, launching or if they're trying to catch up or whatever, I think what we're all more excited about is.
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Any product that we launch, we want to make sure that there's a different shader and we want to make sure that it's better at some level than what the competition is doing.
16:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, sometimes we're at not the first one to launch a product, you know, I think, for example, staking or other type of products, we we were definitely not the first one, but
16:48
[SPEAKER_00]: What we did instead is spending a lot of time with customer coming to them and you know doing user research, seeing how they react to the UI and UX Did they understand what they were doing?
16:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we need to add more education All these kind of things and really trying to make the experience pretty unique and And I think that's kind of the secret sauce for for Robinhood is sometimes we we probably spent a bit more time than what the competitor will do to launch a product
17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But we think that the U.S. square ends and the experience over all of the customers is better.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And you see it across all the products that we've launched, like not just crypto, but if you think about our credit card, for example, with the reward that is pretty unique, the design of the crowd that is really unique.
17:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we try to take an existing problem where some of his cars are only allowed for the elites and we actually make it more accessible to everybody and on top of that we try to bring the secret sauce where we're going to give something that is very hard to to to match and to compare.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But, um,
17:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I also think, you know, it's a big compliment for all the teams that are working here, like when we see someone trying to do the exact same thing as we just launched.
18:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that we actually hit the target and that he made them excited enough to actually try to build it as well.
18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I will say it's always interesting to see how the competition react and to work towards like grabbing more market share from them.
18:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, democratized finance for all is your guys is slogan.
18:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You definitely you definitely do that as a credit card holder When you guys rolled that out and Brendan Rembers I was one of the first people.
18:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I got I got selected.
18:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I got it and everybody was still on the wait list You know waiting for it.
18:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt I felt honored of the privilege and the UI experience there was really awesome the rewards program school
18:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Question, you mentioned earlier you said that we haven't really changed anything to our road map.
18:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So the kind of the first part of the question is if you haven't changed while we're in this build builder's market, what are you doubling down on and then the kind of the second part to that is I'm really interested in your take on somebody who's been in the crypto space for so long.
19:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody who has been building four years, the AI narrative that is just penetrated.
19:07
[SPEAKER_02]: not just the crypto market, but the entire stock market as a whole.
19:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And we found it interesting on our rundown how kind of the IGV software stock has traded similarly to Bitcoin.
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe Bitcoin's gotten wrapped up in that narrative fundamentally.
19:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have a take on that?
19:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And how is AI not affected your roadmap or made it faster?
19:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Made it better?
19:28
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your thought on that?
19:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Just as a, you know, somebody's a veteran in the space.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, AI is probably the most exciting thing in the past few years where it's really changing the way we are working in a lot of ways.
19:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So initially, we focused a lot in bringing the tools internally, making sure that everyone at the company can start using these tools, can start understanding AI.
19:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really a different way of working now.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, you can have someone who's not technical at all.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: querying a very complex databases and making very complex queries through just a chat agent.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So that really changed way that our product manager or compliance or legal teams are working and it really gives them a lot more autonomy and it just makes everything faster to be honest.
20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have to constantly talk to a data science person or an engineer to get some technical answer.
20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's been a big change.
20:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Same thing for engineering.
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we have a lot of these tools that are helping engineer build faster.
20:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, you can use it as a kind of an agent on the side that helps you write code or write queries.
20:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can even have like some agents like just writing the code itself and shipping it.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That has been a huge and log.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: We see a lot of awkward now being written by AI, being reviewed by AI, being deployed by AI.
20:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, all of that is really kind of changing the way we are able to ship and the pace we are able to ship at.
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's pretty exciting for us, you know, I used to be an engineer.
21:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the amount of time you will spend just on fixing a little Niali bug or Niali problem or something that you didn't know so you had to learn before you could really code or anything that.
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's kind of solved and you can just focus on really the complex problem and really thinking about how you're going to architect a special service, how are you going to make them talk to each other and all of this kind of thing.
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: That has been a big differentiator.
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We're also focusing a lot on building AI tools for customers, so we made some demonstration of that.
21:39
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a vibe trading tool.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We have an assistant that gives you information about your portfolio.
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: All of this is pretty unique to Robinhood because we have
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: all this data that we have about you portfolio, about your risk appetite, about your, you know, what you've been doing historically and you know, I think we'll be able to do something that is pretty unique and and you will like I don't know if you saw the the event in November but we were really able to
22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Customize the type of response space on the customer.
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you were asking, like, if you're asking to the Assistant, like, I might too have a on one specific type of product.
22:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So what will you do for XYZ situation?
22:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Having this kind of personalized answer is pretty unique.
22:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And on Northside, on the crypto side, we're also focusing on a lot of IPI.
22:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a crypto API that you can use and you can basically query and build anything that you want to run it.
22:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I was playing this weekend over creating a small trading bot, with Cloud and using our IPI, and it was pretty incredible, like I think, in
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe 45 minutes, I had something up and running, and then I could say to the agent to keep like optimizing the trading bot.
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And so at the end of the day, I had something like pretty sophisticated that was directly querying the Robin and API to trade on crypto.
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, that's the kind of thing that we're going to see more and more is agent that are going to take over kind of the basic tasks that you're looking at and being able to execute it for you and making it better and making you think about your portfolio and your investment a bit more.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess in line with what you just said it sounded like you were saying that you created a, you know, trading algorithm or trading bot through cloud and then you were able to integrate that into your Robinhood account.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that true?
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for the crypto side, we have an API that we've built.
23:50
[SPEAKER_00]: We've never talked too much about it, so it's not the most used product, but if you go on darkstartrablinon.com, you will see all the details to create your own API key.
24:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll see all the end point that you can use to
24:04
[SPEAKER_00]: to place orders, look at your story, all this kind of thing.
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's something that we think is more and more important because I think that's where the world is going for some advanced trader.
24:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They will want to have more of it like Algo working for them basically.
24:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's fascinating.
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, it seems like people could create more complex strategies of accumulation as opposed to just a simple dollar-cost average, where it's like, oh, every single day, I'll buy our every single week, I'll buy a little bit, Quinn, like everyone knows that.
24:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that there can be a bit more nuanced to it where it can say, hey, every time there is every day that we're beneath the 200-day moving average or every day that the RSI's extended below a 30, I wanna be buying.
24:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that possible to make more complex triggers like that into like consistent buying opportunities?
24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's, that was a beauty for me of using Cloudy.
24:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like, I'm not necessarily the most sophisticated trader, but I was actually able to create all these different strategies.
25:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, right before launching the bots, you will do an analysis to understand if it's in a bare market, like in a bull market, every hour where it will just reset
25:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is so much more you could build, like I haven't done it, but you could connect to X and connect to news and understand a bit more like what's going in the world.
25:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think for us what's very important is I think this foundational layer where once about or once the customer wants to make a decision, I will actually place the others through the API.
25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, cloud as a way to do it or cloud or whatever.
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll go, you're using.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think just a time that he took me to do that, compared to the first time I did that in back in 2017 or something when I was doing arbitrage between different platforms, you know, it took me like maybe a tenth of the time if even and the result is so much more sophisticated that I used to be.
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: That is fascinating because
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in a world where everyone's talking about agents and AI and how they can help us.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like that there's some effort here to kind of lean into that and say, hey, you know, let's see what these things can do.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm interested.
26:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we have two guys on the team, two analysts that are just so in the weeds on that.
26:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes they're trying to talk to me about it, and it goes over my head, and then other times I'm like, it's almost unbelievable that we've gotten to a point where you can do some of these things.
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Pay attention to what's happening with AI.
26:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's scaling faster, and it's growing and maturing faster, then a lot of people expect it.
26:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can almost have, like you said, this agent, this partner that can work alongside you, knows you best and is able to just help you with basic, menial, task, or other things.
27:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And a very just,
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like consistent robotic way, which I think is useful because a lot of air tends to come through like human decisions, especially in the financial markets.
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, if you're listening out there, continue to keep an eye out on that.
27:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to go back to a talking point that we had a little bit earlier, which was on the tokenized stock setting.
27:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause the word tokenization, the whole idea of it, real world assets, this stuff is thrown around weekly on our shows and in our communities.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone loves to do it.
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they always like to use the example, oh, Larry thinks talking about how there can be trillions of dollars in tokenized market cap and different people in politics are talking about it.
27:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And banks and asset managers and all these other things.
27:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But you all have been like one of the primary drivers saying, hey, we're actually going to launch thousands of tokenized stocks, which is primarily across Europe now.
27:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So my question was, can you just walk us through maybe how that's gone so far and what that looks like?
28:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, we've been having a lot of demand on expanding the number of stocks.
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think a lot of people were actually excited about starting to use it and got frustrated by the fact that, you know, we only had two or nine at the beginning.
28:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was a lot of four focus.
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the beauty of the tokenization system is we build this engine that could actually work for any type of assets.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And that I think is pretty unique when you think about the way that financial instruments were built back in the days.
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And really for us, public stocks in the EU, we're kind of like the step zero of like the vision that we have.
28:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So we want to expand to way more than just the US markets.
28:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to be able to make it connecting to any type of exchange in the future.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Because one of the big issues that you're still seeing is that it's very simple to connect to one or two exchanges But then it's very hard when you want to get access to two or more.
29:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, as an American, if you want to buy on the London exchange or on the Singapore exchange, it's hard And difficult and same thing in other countries where if you actually want to get access to US stocks or to European stocks, it's very difficult.
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I think tokenization is kind of the beauty here, it's like we can have this this layer that will make accessible all this type of assets and then no matter where you are you just need a self-cocity wallet and you can trade and you can hold this side said you will still get the dividend proceed you will still still get what's what happened after a corporate action
29:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But the same system can be used for anything else.
29:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we could see a world where real estate is tokenized.
29:56
[SPEAKER_00]: The agent that you're building, we sclar this tokenized because it's very good or whatever.
30:01
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there is like really unlimited possibility and I think that's really what we get excited about.
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Because right now it's just like the first step.
30:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, to your point, it's just in the EU, we are working into opening these assets more and more.
30:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you will see a lot of these competitors that you were mentioning, building more and more on top of it.
30:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's just going to be so much more efficient and reduce the cost for everybody, that at some point it will just not make sense for you to not use tokenization to trade.
30:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I just had jump in Brennan.
30:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole you could take us with where you think the tokenization could go.
30:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Because again, you're rolling out credit cards.
30:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I went down and went through your mortgage application process, which again was a partnership with the, you know, it wasn't the Robinhood Morgan firm, you're partnering.
30:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, is that, is that something that's tied into your road map and maybe you can't speak on it?
31:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But is that what you're looking for?
31:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, hey, if we can
31:04
[SPEAKER_02]: get people partnered with their mortgages and bring it on chain can we do car loans and bring it on chain we bring credit cards bring is that is that where it the pocket might be going is that something you guys are thinking about?
31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah definitely the idea is to do a lot more and I think it's not necessarily like we want to offer a mortgage on chain or something like that but for example using your asset as collateral is going to become more and more easier if you go on chain for example like
31:32
[SPEAKER_00]: If you try to get a mortgage with just a little bit or a small loan, which just a little bit of karate all that is, I don't know you're stuck on your portfolio.
31:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's often very difficult.
31:45
[SPEAKER_00]: They take an haircut, there's like a lot of rules.
31:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But on chain, you can actually do a lot of it.
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty easily currently, like right now it's more for crypto asset than for anything, but you can see this word where tokenized assets are going to be a lot more easy to to pledge against to borrow against to have as collateral and I think that's going to be frankly like a game changer for how all the system works because
32:13
[SPEAKER_00]: you will remove a lot like everything is a smart contract right so you will be able to remove a lot of the work that is happening when you apply for for for mortgage or for loan you will be able to do underwriting a lot faster because you will have access to all the stories through the blockchain of this specific wallet or customer so things should actually be optimized the cars should be smaller and and I think that's that's kind of the beauty of it
32:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, in a world where it works for US stocks and ETF, I don't see why it wouldn't work for, you know, the piece of art that you have behind you, or for like the card that you have in your garage, like all this type of assets should be able to be tokenized and use more and more on the defy world.
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the misunderstandings that people have about tokenization is they go, well, why do I need to use it?
33:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Why can't I just go and do it normally?
33:12
[SPEAKER_01]: When in reality, it's not quite as simple as that.
33:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, going back to the stock analogy, right?
33:19
[SPEAKER_01]: For a lot of those people that are in Europe, they can't just go and buy and get exposure to US stocks.
33:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, maybe in the States it's a little bit easier to obviously get access to US stocks, but even global stocks, you're in the US.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You get a lot of access to different ETFs in different products.
33:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But to the rest of the world, the rest of the global financial system, it's not as easy.
33:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for a lot of the people in Europe, if they want to go and get, you know, exposure to your stocks, it's not as easy, especially like individual pieces.
33:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what this does, this is just saying, hey, previously this was difficult, maybe not even possible.
33:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And now the sudden it's possible, which I think does a lot of things.
33:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I would argue again that that increases liquidity, that brings new capital in.
34:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You create a whole new addressable market of people who, previous probably would have won it exposure.
34:09
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the last couple of decades, like the US stock market and financial system is like the golden bar.
34:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what people want to be invested in.
34:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the largest in the world.
34:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It sets the standard for everything else.
34:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's where a lot of the big growth in tech companies.
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And
34:24
[SPEAKER_01]: infrastructure companies just are.
34:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think tokenization does that.
34:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's saying how can we give people who have had No opportunity or very limited opportunity to do this and now we're creating a way for them to have exposure and I think Tiva to your point.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of other areas that this can go into and we'll continue to see different forms of it and I'm excited about it
34:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll have to just continue to track, is there any date?
34:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you'll have to say this.
34:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there any date as to maybe when we can expect to get access to that in the US or maybe when different parts of like other continents can get access?
35:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no dates right now we're just working pretty hard on it and that's one of the top priority at this point and and I think to your point you were absolutely right I think I could even add more like for example the 24 seven aspect you know if you think about Europe It's already six hours from New York or nine hours from from California
35:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty hard to be active on the entire market when you are dinner or something like that.
35:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You also have the questions of weekends.
35:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, tokenization brings you 24-7 trading aspect and look at all the things that happens on weekend.
35:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Even as we can, that has an impact on the market.
35:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So why should you not be able to trade it?
35:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's where
35:48
[SPEAKER_00]: tokenization is where we're going to to change things and then to your point on accessibility like 100% the amount of countries that is still very difficult to open a brokerage account to found the account because they don't necessarily have the same payment method that the platform is using all of this can be simplified with with what we are building.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I am curious, how is the trading on weekends thing going to work?
36:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny, I just had a buddy who was talking to me and they go, how do they make this possible?
36:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, you know, I asked myself the same question when you all started adding 24 hour trading during the weeks.
36:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, you can trade in the middle of the night, but the stock exchanges are closed.
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's after the after hours.
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's before the morning hours.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how is that possible?
36:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I don't know.
36:35
[SPEAKER_01]: That's probably a good question to talk to them about is the back bones of this, you know, for 24, not even 24, 5, but 24, 7 trading, which is what you all are pushing for, is the back bones of that built through tokenization, or is the backbone of that just like a different form of like financial tech.
36:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so what we are building on tokenize is using blockchain technology for 24.5 that we have in the US.
36:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not currently using blockchain and it's just we have, you know, this large distribution.
37:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We have all this market makers that are working with us.
37:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're able to do that through NATS.
37:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think for 24-7, it's going the same question.
37:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Initially, it's going to be just a few liquidity providers and custom mail using it.
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But slowly, it's going to become more and more the norm.
37:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And become more and more important for everyday.
37:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are in the market, you will have to kind of adapt and start also utilizing the technology over the weekend.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, you know, why we launch or stock token product in three phases, some of our competitors went straight to DFI.
37:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to have these different faces to make sure that we would have enough of liquidy and demand on the platform to we were working to have a bit of time to support 24-7 the trading of stocks.
38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And three, we wanted to openify.
38:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, for us, it was really this idea of creating this three milestone to really make sure that we could have rolled out the products safely.
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And that when we will have it online, basically, people will be able to utilize it and not have to worry about what will happen during the weekends.
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's one of the things that I'm very excited about.
38:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what you're hearing from some folks that are saying, like, why would I use tokenized asset versus XYZ?
38:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because we don't have yet all the benefits of the crypto technology on this assets, but I think once it's going to become more and more obvious that you have to use it, otherwise you have to either the disadvantage almost.
38:51
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the examples that I always laugh when you try to transfer from one brokerage in the US to another one,
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: is in the same process, you know, takes days, you don't really know what's happening, you hope that it works, you know, it's kind of this weird situation.
39:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine this using crypto, right?
39:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see the blockchain, transfer, you can see what's happening on the chain, it will take maybe a minute if you run.
39:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of world that, you know, we are used to for almost everything else, for payments, you know, you just stop your phone, you don't wait like 10 minutes or whatever,
39:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think people are just going to want that in the future for also all their financial instruments including stocks including ETF and their phones and etc.
39:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, a big backbone of a lot of the stuff that we've talked about and something that I've been tracking lately in regards to all of this is the Robin Hood chain, right?
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We were just talking about this right before we began.
39:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And you guys are up to 14 million transactions.
39:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I think 1.8 million contracts deployed.
39:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what can you tell us about this?
40:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're all super excited, you know, I think for us what we thought that this chain will be is a backbone to kind of launch all this product that we wanted to launch and put more and more robbing it on this chain so that we cannot get all these benefits that we just talked about around 24 seven and instant settlement and all these things.
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So we just launched the chain in Hong Kong in at consensus and.
40:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That was what like two or three weeks ago and so being able to see this level of adoption so far has been really cool So we we put some of our stock tokens on it so that people can start testing it and and seeing how it works And we've seen like a bunch of projects that have been created that you know We don't have any affiliation ways.
40:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't even
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Sponsor, anything, it's just people sending me on Twitter, their link or three email and it's been really fun to see what people are building with it.
40:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this idea of a chain that is going to be dedicated to financial system.
41:03
[SPEAKER_00]: is actually resonating with people very well.
41:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's been really cool and yeah if anyone listening wants to to build on the chain the documentation is online it's very simple to access it and we're also doing a hackathon with arbitrom where we are putting a price of one million so you know a lot of things to build I think it's just the beginning
41:26
[SPEAKER_00]: For us, but it's a very, very exciting beginning and what I'm the most excited about is when we're going to be able to talk about all the features that we're building on top of the chain that people will be able to access.
41:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That's I think what we're all really interested about you know, I want to squeeze as much out of you as I can, but I don't I certainly don't want to get you in trouble because we need to have you back on and stuff does come out, so there's going to be a healthy balance of pushing pull here, but you know, kind of in regards to this, you know, rolling on the themes of new products, new innovations, one of the big ones that stood out to us over here again, me and Tvo were.
42:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, added users, but, uh, one of the big ones was RVI, and I'm not sure how much you can talk into this.
42:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit maybe outside the theme of crypto, but it seems really innovative.
42:17
[SPEAKER_01]: because for people who aren't familiar with the new RBI product, it is essentially allowing people to get access to private companies without being an accredited investor, which is fascinating.
42:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what it is is it's like a portfolio or an index of a bunch of different,
42:36
[SPEAKER_01]: private companies.
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like close to 10 or something like that.
42:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can go and you can get access to this as if you're trading a stock or you're just trading shares of this thing.
42:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, it's filled up with privately traded companies.
42:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Like data bricks was one and there's a handful of others that were inside of there.
42:56
[SPEAKER_01]: what can you talk to us about this because people have theorized, again, going back to tokenization, people have theorized that, hey, we can actually get exposure to privately traded companies through tokenization.
43:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And this seems like it's kind of the first step towards that actually becoming a reality.
43:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was kind of the idea.
43:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We think private equity is extremely important.
43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We think it's one of this big differentiator between, you know, type of people basically if you're a high net worth or ultra high net worth.
43:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get access to some of these deals, and even then it's complicated, you need to know the people and all of these things.
43:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But at least you don't have this accredited investor limit as long as you make a 2-on-on-k year or you have 1 million networks you have access to it.
43:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But for the rest of the population, which is a very, very large prison page, they actually can even, even if they add access, they can even invested it, even if they know the risks that they are taking.
44:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we all with thought, it was really unfair.
44:10
[SPEAKER_00]: This companies are usually getting success because of the usage of all these people and all these customers.
44:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But they are not able to ride the wave with the company and they just have to wait for the company to go public.
44:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And nowadays company takes more and more time before going public because it's easier to raise capital on on private market.
44:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really something that we think that if we really want to change the way people are investing and if we really want to make it accessible to everybody, we need to remove some of these barriers.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We do think tokenization is one way to do it, but there is still this, I created the investor limit.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, there are still some work for us to do on the crypto site, but the Robinhood Venture product, I think, is extremely interesting.
45:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I think for us, it's one more step into this idea of democratizing finance for all.
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, hopefully we can do more on the crypto side as well.
45:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's part of the fun of being in the space of crypto.
45:17
[SPEAKER_02]: It moves so fast, but specifically of Robin Hood.
45:20
[SPEAKER_02]: You guys are always pushing the limits and rolling out these new things.
45:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things for the crypto-specific community and what we do is we have a safe exchange list and we're always trying to keep track of,
45:30
[SPEAKER_02]: you know hey where can you go and you know whether you want to offload it to a cold storage or keep it on exchange and monitoring that you guys are always kind of rolling out new options and new cryptos all the time and toss I guess you know to us when we see a tweet go live from Robinhood it's like it seems kind of random like oh okay today you know this is available dog with hats available and then can't networks available today and obviously it's not random to you guys
45:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So just interested, you know, what's the process?
45:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it more of relationships with the teams?
46:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it hype?
46:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it market capital?
46:02
[SPEAKER_02]: A little bit of all.
46:03
[SPEAKER_02]: What goes into you guys deciding and rolling out different tokens?
46:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're a pretty long listing framework.
46:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have multiple teams that meet and discuss and analyze every single token that we launch.
46:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is analysis around security, the technology site, you know, how can we cluster the compliance and legal obviously just playing some time on an operation as well.
46:28
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to make sure that we have enough liquidity and support from market makers to support the demand and making sure
46:36
[SPEAKER_00]: are not to wait.
46:38
[SPEAKER_00]: All these kind of things kind of out part of the decision process.
46:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And then some of the point you mentioned as well, like, you know, the demand that we're getting from our customers, the demand that we're seeing online, like what else we're volume, market cap, like these kind of things.
46:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it just takes a bit of time to be honest, to least some of these assets and so we have this like regular cadence now.
47:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We've done a lot of work internally to make sure that we can support asset in a faster way because it's still one of the top requires that we get for more customers to get access to more type of crypto.
47:15
[SPEAKER_00]: When we list the crypto, there's a lot more work coming into it, you know, there is all the anti money laundering checks that we do during like transfer.
47:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We want a customer to be able to transfer to their costorage for some of these assets we want to offer, staking.
47:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So any new listing takes some times and that's kind of what's happening in general.
47:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: there's just so much going on it's hard to capture all of it at the at the end of the day you know what you matter no matter which way you look at it i mean there's there truly is a million things especially when you're dealing in
47:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty much all areas of finances at this point because you can trade cryptos, you can trade metals, you can trade options and leverage, and you can short now and you can go long.
47:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's so many different things to kind of keep track of which makes it.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess somewhat difficult to keep up with, but one of the things that we were going through was just following, I guess how crypto has balloon, because there's only these new products and it's been such a big push.
48:20
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things I didn't notice was that the year over your crypto revenue fill by about 30% or 38% from Q4 of 2024 to Q4 of 2025 and, you know, I think it's a little bit hard for me to digest because I'm someone who's been advocating that there has been a strong disconnect from the fundamentals and the technicals.
48:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Meaning that it seems as if the fundamentals have gotten so much better.
48:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, whether you're looking at it from regulations and how many crypto companies are getting in trouble with the SEC or what's actually been built or the amount of active users or all these other metrics, like total growth, and I feel as if there's this disconnection between the massive leap that we have taken forward and where we're at right now.
49:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a lot of cryptos have fallen into places that they were maybe years ago, despite how much progress has actually been made.
49:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would Robin Hood, right in there with that, where I just, again, feel that there's a disconnect between how much has been accomplished and what we've seen in terms of depreciation over the last several months or so.
49:25
[SPEAKER_01]: What maybe contributed this, like the most, like what contributed the most to this and why did it happen and I guess how do you plan on getting it back from maybe 38% year of a year drop.
49:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, the micro environment is really what happened.
49:44
[SPEAKER_00]: When we look at our market share, we still feel very good about opposition.
49:48
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't feel like it's something specific to Robinhood.
49:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's really what we worry about.
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, if customer are excited about another type of asset, or if they want to step back from the market for a bit, that's something they can decide.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see if we actually told yesterday that we've seen an uptick in February, in terms of volume compared to January.
50:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are seeing a bit of a rebound.
50:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And overall for us, what I was saying at the very beginning of the interview was what we focused on is building and making sure that we have all the tools that people are looking for and the market.
50:30
[SPEAKER_00]: the actual volume number.
50:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's less something that we can control because at the end of the day like, you know, the macros are all the macros, but I think as a builder within the space, what we are focusing on more is like bringing utility to the space.
50:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I think tokenized assets for example is something that can really change the way that crypto is being used.
50:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you will see that actually happening, I think you will see also some of these assets coming back up.
50:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and we totally agree because again, we've been saying it went on the run down the macro the macro the macro So we totally agree with you.
51:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I will I will say one point depend on how much you can say because you guys have rolled out the prediction markets and we've been really ahead of the game Our team, you know, especially Brian and Joe calling like prediction markets super cycle
51:16
[SPEAKER_02]: almost a year ago at this point is there any correlation that you see from the crypto to the prediction markets of that you know that high risk individual that likes to you know maybe take take some whether it's for fun the prediction markets you know whether it's sports or something more serious like elections and what's going on in the macro environment is there any correlation there for volume that you see.
51:37
[SPEAKER_00]: No, at this point we haven't seen any cannibalization like people stopping trying crypto because they want to trade something else on prediction market or anything like that.
51:48
[SPEAKER_00]: What we actually see is people using multiple of the instruments at the same time for enabling the strategy.
51:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
51:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We see people buying futures or buying prediction markets and also buying spot.
52:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, prediction market overall is an amazing product.
52:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people are actually getting more comfortable into some of their investment strategy because before they will have to pick a specific asset or pick a specific stock, the prediction market gives them more option to actually
52:21
[SPEAKER_00]: realize our strategy.
52:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, let's say you want invest in AI instead of trying to pick one of the AI companies that are very linked to it.
52:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just use a contract on prediction market about AI.
52:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's making it a lot easier for some people to invest.
52:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And overall on crypto, we still see our customer actually engaged and I think overall we all use our net buy on Bitcoin.
52:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's something that really shows you that it's it's something that we shouldn't spend too much time on and we shouldn't be more focusing on on the tool that we are building for the customers.
53:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The prediction market shocked me.
53:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the ability to spin up a business that is doing hundreds of millions in revenue, billions of dollars.
53:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's something like almost $10 billion in total contract volume or something.
53:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And the ability to spin this up in what feels like maybe a year or so, I'm not sure if I'm spot on with that number, but I mean, the ability to spin that up is crazy.
53:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean,
53:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm having hard time even putting words to it because it ballooned so fast and prediction markets have been around and they've been growing, but just how well I think it was integrated, right?
53:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've seen mixed responses online, if some people say, oh, you shouldn't mix this with the brokerage account or this and that, but I just don't understand why not.
53:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the more of you could that you can have in all-in-one platform for everything, I think the more it benefits people.
53:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That feels like the old days, like when you first got an iPhone, and there was a different little app or feature for everything.
54:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it was like, what insane thing was like the internet?
54:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, why are we doing all this?
54:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I have to go to a different website to buy diapers?
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I have to go to a different website to buy clothes?
54:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I have to go to a different website to buy tech parts?
54:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I have to go to a different website to buy furniture?
54:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Why can't we just do a lot of our different aspects of life on one place, whether shopping or investments or whatever it is?
54:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just think that it makes sense because
54:30
[SPEAKER_01]: There's, again, yeah, the more you kind of collect it all together, I think the more convenient it makes it for people, especially when it's in a much more like regulated compliant wax.
54:41
[SPEAKER_01]: The odds are if someone wants to do it, they're going to do it.
54:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
54:43
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone wants to gamble, they're going to go to a casino.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to put on a VPN.
54:47
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to go to some sketchy off-shore place.
54:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not going to stop anyone.
54:52
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone wants to go gamble or do things, they're going to do it in one way or another.
54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I mean, the prediction markets are cool.
55:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I like how they have evolved.
55:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that they need probably a little bit more regulation.
55:05
[SPEAKER_01]: In the sense that if you could stop some of the insider betting and trading on that, I think it would be in a really good spot.
55:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Even just for information gathering, you know, that's something that we focus on on our weekly episodes of, like, hey, let's see what people are, you know, where's the money going?
55:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot easier to have a news headline versus where people put in their actual money for bigger events, but we're on top of the hour here, you know, John.
55:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So we want to leave you with one final thought of, you know, your crypto at Robinhood and where you guys are going before we wrap here.
55:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We do appreciate your time.
55:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So final thought for me.
55:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you know just on the prediction market your toy right it's one of our fastest growing business and I think to your point Like we're doing a lot of work to least specific contracts and make sure that we don't list our Memphis contracts are being a bit more abused on some of the different platform and I think for us Really the the excitement is around this idea of this super app where you can have all your financial instrument in in one place and
56:05
[SPEAKER_00]: where you can benefit from the UX and UI that we've been polishing for a decade, plus, more.
56:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, on the crypto side, you know, really excited about everything that we're building this year.
56:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just a start of the year, you know, we are barely at the beginning of March, and we have so much more to ship, so we, we're excited, and hopefully we can talk about some of these new future on the next time we're here.
56:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We're definitely going to have to.
56:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like there's a lot in the works here, and I think the best really is yet to come, and whether that's maybe waiting for the market conditions to get better, which I think we all believe that it's just a matter of time until conditions do get better.
56:42
[SPEAKER_01]: We go through ups and downs.
56:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's normal.
56:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything tends to get affected when everything goes up, and everything also gets affected when it goes down.
56:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Guys, it's just a normal part of the financial markets and cryptos no exception to that.
56:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same thing, you know, whether there's going to be new products coming, whether there's going to be the Clarity Act, you name it.
56:59
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all sorts of other things in the pipeline to talk about.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Johan, we really appreciate your time.
57:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Where can people get involved if they want to follow you or Robin Hood or anything where the best places to do that?
57:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, X is a great place, you can find me with my name and you all see all the news we are launching and feel free to reach out anything around the chain as well, we are working with a lot of developers so if there is anything you want to build on the chain, don't hesitate to reach out.
57:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
57:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, once again, thank you for joining us.
57:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We appreciate your time and that's going to bring us to a wrap on this episode everyone.
57:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you all for joining this week's episode of the Crypto 101 podcast and we'll see all of you at the same time, same place next week.
57:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Take care.