Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 735 Robinhood Crypto’s Biggest Move Yet with Head of Product Seong Lee

Transcript

Ep. 735 Robinhood Crypto’s Biggest Move Yet with Head of Product Seong Lee · CRYPTO 101

0:08
[SPEAKER_02]: all right everybody welcome back to another action packed high caliber episode here of the crypto 101 podcast who I am pumped for today Brendan you guys know this is a big one we've been talking about Robin Hood on the show in our newsletter all over the place this is a big one Brendan how are you feeling?
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing fantastic.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you said, this is a familiar friend, but new face of that familiar friend group.
0:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Robin Hood, someone who we've had on multiple times over here, we talk about him a lot, you've probably heard of him.
0:43
[SPEAKER_01]: This is gonna be a really good upset race.
0:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, man, well, let's just kick things off.
0:48
[SPEAKER_02]: We have sung Lee joining us who is the head of product at Robin Hood Crypto.
0:52
[SPEAKER_02]: They just came out with a whole slate of new announcements.
0:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're bringing on the man himself to discuss everything behind it.
1:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Song, thank you for joining the show.
1:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And how are you doing?
1:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Very, very good, excited to be here and chat through all the releases that we've done recently.
1:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it seemed like it seemed like a hundred products, but you're the probably the man with the actual number.
1:17
[SPEAKER_02]: How many products did you release over the course of the past couple weeks?
1:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, it's been a blur.
1:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say just counting in my head.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:31
[SPEAKER_00]: at least seven to eight.
1:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a lot.
1:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been a lot.
1:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to dive into each of them, try to unpack what was going on.
1:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you just give us a high level on the big headline, you know, you know, the thing that caught my eye the most was y'all launched your own blockchain called Robin Hood chain.
1:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's start there and you know kind of just walk us through the thought process behind launching your own blockchain because so far not many publicly traded companies have their own blockchain
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we launched the Robin chain.
2:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a permissionless L2 blockchain.
2:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Really focused on tokenized real-world assets, and ideally for this vision and future, where traditional finance and crypto emerge, and we can talk about some of the products that
2:29
[SPEAKER_00]: We're already and have released that I think are starting to do that.
2:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It is permissionless.
2:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's built for the entire ecosystem.
2:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So it allows developers to build and deploy apps.
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It allows retail and institutional users to come on the chain and access stock tokens and other defy applications.
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's optimized for super high performance.
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, our block times are 100 milliseconds.
2:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Super high throughput.
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: as we've seen over the past couple of days.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I mentioned before, you know, the flagship feature here is Stock Tokens.
3:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives eligible global traders 24-7 on-chain exposure to US stocks and ETFs in their crypto wallet.
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and you know, you asked, you know, what's the thinking behind this?
3:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think the first and sort of most important thing for us
3:28
[SPEAKER_00]: access to the financial system should be easier, more transparent, lower cost and all that.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And we believe the best way to do that is through tokenization.
3:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And just for us thinking about what's needed for tokenization to succeed, one of the key parts of that is a
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: high-throughput, high-trust, and high-speed platform where tokenized stocks could exist on top of.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And for us, that was the robin' and chain, which we have launched.
4:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
4:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And and was there, you know, a specific customer problem that required you guys to start and own your own blockchain as opposed to integrating with, you know, an existing network.
4:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I kind of want to just understand why, you know, owning the rails, right, was the necessary evolution for for the stage of the company.
4:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there's a couple of aspects here.
4:33
[SPEAKER_00]: The first big thing for us is one, we wanted to make sure that tokenized assets were the first and foremost, most important part of the chain.
4:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what we're going to do.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Starting from there, it's, you know, not like a ton of options where that's the primary focus.
4:57
[SPEAKER_00]: The second technical requirements for us is we did have pretty specific needs on not necessarily the current state, but what we believe the future of onchain finance looks like when it comes to
5:13
[SPEAKER_00]: through put and block times and what you need in order to sustain very high volume liquidity at scale for tokenized assets, borrowing a lot from what we see on our traditional finance apps today.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And the third part here is flexibility over the controls that you have over the chain.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I would say it's those three aspects for us.
5:40
[SPEAKER_02]: awesome.
5:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And I saw that you guys are using the Arbitrum technology stack, not actually built on the Arbitrum one network, but just kind of leveraging the technology, the open source stuff that they built, and you built your own one.
5:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But I thought the most interesting part of this, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on why this happened.
6:01
[SPEAKER_02]: But
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: apparently the Robin Hood chain burns Ethereum as the native gas token.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I want you to correct me if I'm wrong there.
6:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just want to understand it was that a technical like, you know, decision or was it primarily like an economic decision because you wanted to strengthen Ethereum's price essentially?
6:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely not an economic decision.
6:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely a little bit definitely more on the technical side, but also developer friendliness.
6:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The Ethereum ecosystem is very widely accepted.
6:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Developers are very familiar with how to build on Ethereum.
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that made it an easy decision for us to make it such that when we are encouraging developers to build on the Robin of Chain that we're reducing the friction that developers face in order to do so.
7:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So, love it.
7:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, makes a ton of sense.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and when it comes down to this, it gives you like full control to really fine-tune this thing to exactly what you want and what you need it becomes a little bit more flexible and adaptable and I think that's what you need right when you you haven't exchanged the size of Robinhood and when you're attacking and building all these different areas and products I think it makes the most sense to kind of say hey it makes
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It would make the most sense that we have control over this.
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: We can build it, we can scale it.
7:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We can kind of move this in the direction that we need to based upon what we're working on and what we're servicing and as the space evolves.
7:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, one of the big ones that stood out here is the flagship of what you guys have been doing, which is tokenized stocks.
7:47
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been something that obviously,
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's been talking about tokenization and tokenized stocks forever.
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like really in the last like year or two You've started to really see this take off and uses has gone up and I remember when you all made this announcement about bringing this and making it accessible to everyone You know, just through the app
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: That was one of those moments where it was like, wow, this is going mainstream because it's not like, oh, you have to go set up a wallet and you have to go to this name that you probably never heard of if you're from traditional finance.
8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, anyone can have a Robinhood brokerage account.
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You can do this stuff.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You can interact with it.
8:25
[SPEAKER_01]: and basically the way that this works and correct me from wrong here, but you guys have these stock tokens and then they track big names like Apple and Nvidia where you get the price exposure but not necessarily the ownership.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So you get the exposure to these price movements, but you don't get ownership, you don't get voting, you don't get the direct dividends.
8:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you walk a beginner through maybe why it's built that way and explain it a little bit more for us?
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, absolutely.
8:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So every stock token that we launch stock token, so I want to say about 10 days ago, every stock token is backed one to one to equities held in secure custody.
9:10
[SPEAKER_00]: This structure gives the holders of these tokens clear rights to the underlying value of the equity.
9:17
[SPEAKER_00]: While you get the benefits of it being on the blockchain.
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was really important for two reasons.
9:25
[SPEAKER_00]: One, it enables global access to these stock tokens and two, it enables 24-7 access to these stock tokens.
9:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Because now this stock token can be on a decentralized protocol and whatnot.
9:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, the exciting things that we are looking forward to is these tokens are fully compatible with, you know, fully self-costudied self-costudied crypto wallets, decentralized exchanges.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be used as collateral and decentralized lending protocols at what not.
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, if you're a holder, you can keep your equity exposure while participating in these advanced on-chain strategies.
10:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to talk a little bit about the benefits of the corporate actions that you get.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, holders of these tokens, stock tokens, do get the benefits of dividends,
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not in the traditional sense, so, you know, the way that the stock token holders receive dividends is instead of receiving a cash dividend.
10:28
[SPEAKER_00]: We use what's called the multiplier mechanism.
10:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the underlying company pays a dividend, the dividend is actually automatically reinvested to purchase more shares of the underlying stock.
10:40
[SPEAKER_00]: and the number of shares that your token now represents increases.
10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of receiving a cash pay out, your token's multiplier is what increases.
10:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So you do get the benefits of the dividend.
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It just means that the way you get it is that your token dynamically represents more shares of stock over time.
11:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a previous kind of innocence.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not a rebase, well, depends how you are defining it, but rebase in the traditional sort of crypto methodology means that you hold one token at one point in time and now you hold three tokens.
11:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more akin to
11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say, I mean, I don't know the right specific terminology for it, but there's lots of tokens out there that have this, have a similar methodology.
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You can look at, I mean, I don't want to name any tokens, but it's a pretty common pattern to use multipliers instead of adjusting the raw token value.
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's like a points system.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a point system, okay, so one example I'll give you is that a lot of the state-to-Eath the liquid-staking protocols use a similar methodology.
12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you look at some of the liquid-staking tokens, I'm not going to name any, but you know what they do is each state-liquid-staking token.
12:13
[SPEAKER_00]: represents more, more eith over time, even though the number of tokens of the liquid staking token that you hold is the same.
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a, is a similar methodology.
12:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you know, the one thing I do with clarifies your right, you know, stock token holders don't have voting rights.
12:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing that I will say is that we do have future plans to enable
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I really liked that, and I think at the end of the day, I'm going to say something that we've talked about a lot in recent episodes, but I think it's important for everyone to understand this, but this benefits everyone.
12:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It benefits, I think, the average trader and user out there who's just listening to the podcast, because now more people are able to get exposure.
13:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, if you're in the United States, odds are you can buy very easily without any kind of work around just about any stock that you want.
13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in other parts of the world in other countries, there's a few more hoops that you have to dive through.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit more complicated.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not quite as easy.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what this does is this basically says, hey, just about anyone, anywhere, so long as this is approved in your country, you can go and you can get exposure to all these different equities.
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you guys are going.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's essentially like the easiest comparison I can make here is like the Bitcoin SPOT ETFs, right?
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You go and you buy some of the Bitcoin SPOT ETFs,
13:41
[SPEAKER_01]: than the asset manager goes and buys Bitcoin on your behalf.
13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a direct correlation to the buying and selling, and it's not just like imaginary, money going back and forth.
13:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's the benefit here.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that again, you all, in us, as the users and the traders, more people get exposure, more people get access.
13:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, Robinhood, you benefit from this, because there's more people that get exposure.
14:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like a win-win year in both ways.
14:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think my favorite part about this,
14:08
[SPEAKER_01]: is the 24-7 push for these things.
14:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That has been, I'm a, you know, full disclosure, I'm a big, advid user of Robinhood.
14:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been transferring more and more assets over the, especially in recent years over to Robinhood because of some of those things.
14:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You've seen it over in the traditional markets where you can go things like 24-5.
14:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the next logical step, and you've seen the S&P talk about this, or excuse me, you've seen the New York Stock Exchange talk about this, you've seen Nasdaq talk about this.
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They know that we're heading towards an era of being able to trade anything anytime, anywhere.
14:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I see here is that you will get to be a little bit
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, the first mover in a sense.
14:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys are coming out as one of the big, more centralized players saying we're going to be able to give access to this.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's good, because I think people are nervous.
15:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It sucks when something happens during the weekend or when you're out of market hours or whatever it is and you can't get in or out of what you want, right?
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause sometimes you hear things that might matter to you but not the other people or vice versa, you're like, man, I really wish I could act upon this news.
15:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it makes no sense that in 2026, you can't have some of those freedoms.
15:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We clearly have the technology.
15:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I just wanted to kind of paint the picture here for the average user, but let you respond before I ask my next question.
15:38
[SPEAKER_00]: No, absolutely, you know, I think for those of us who've been, you know, in crypto for years, 24-7 is just the baseline expectation for us and, you know, that speaks to the level of access and transparency and innovation you get when you're able to build applications on a permissionless blockchain.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly the type of experience to be want to bring to exposure to stocks and ETFs.
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So definitely agree.
16:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the big question I have here is, you know, you can do this across Europe in other places, but when are we going to be able to get access to this in the U.S.?
16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we don't have immediate plans to offer stock tokens in the U.S.
16:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Stopping it.
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: The regulatory framework for the U.S. doesn't exist yet, but you know, one of the things where most most excited about about stock tokens is that they're available through the Robin of Wallet, which is, you know, a fully self-costudied mobile wallet that you can find
16:50
[SPEAKER_00]: available in more than 120 countries, and you can access stock tokens in the eligible jurisdictions through the wallet, and it's been one of our largest global releases to date.
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, for customers in the US, like you mentioned, you know, you do have relatively few barriers.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Fewer barriers to stop access and exposure when you're living in the US.
17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I think, I think that's where we are.
17:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
17:22
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that makes it ton of sense and, you know, I think kind of the one of the big net benefits of this is like more access to US stocks from other folks and so there's just more inflows it lowers the friction into US stocks, which is good for all of us here in the US because you have more folks outside of the US essentially.
17:44
[SPEAKER_02]: quickly, you know, easily able to buy US exposure, and so, you know, kudos to y'all, and we're hopeful that the Clarity Act passes, which I think there's about, you know, a month left for the negotiations before this thing gets
18:02
[SPEAKER_02]: either past or kicked out to the next decade we will see.
18:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But will the clarity act?
18:08
[SPEAKER_02]: If it does get past, maybe come to bear on some of the regulatory framework that would allow a larger proliferation of your on-chain products to Americans.
18:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, we do believe that the Clarity Act will be a really positive step forward and helping to enable and accelerate new crypto products and services in the US, including tokenization.
18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, we do believe it will help quite a bit.
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we agree.
18:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's move on to yield derivative, some of the other stable coins that you guys are working with.
18:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the biggest headline from your recent announcement was Robin Hood Earn is offering about 7% return annualized on USDG through Morpho.
19:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And I believe USDG
19:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, is issued or managed by a protocol called Spark.
19:07
[SPEAKER_02]: He could correct me on that if I'm wrong.
19:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But for someone who doesn't know about this whole landscape, how does it work?
19:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's the yield coming from?
19:15
[SPEAKER_02]: What's USDG?
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: What's more fo?
19:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Just give us the the rundown.
19:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, absolutely.
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll start with USDG.
19:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So USDG is a stablecoin that we've partnered with Paxoson, and it's backed one to one, and it's the core USD$backed stablecoin that we are using for an offering to customers for this Robinhood Earned product.
19:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Robinhood earn in a nutshell is the first embedded DeFi product that we have in the Robinhood app in the U.S.
19:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So you know what it is if I were to break the product down is roughly four layers.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: The first that we talked about is the stable coin aspect where
20:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, as a user on robinid, you can convert your US dollar to USDG one for one with no fees.
20:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's part one.
20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The second part is that there is a embedded self-custodied crypto wallet directly on the robinid app now.
20:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So actually when you're using the robinid earn product, you're actually using your own self-custodied crypto wallet.
20:29
[SPEAKER_00]: The third part of this is, through the wallet, there is an integration to a decentralized lending protocol called Morpho.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you use the robinet earn product, you're actually
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: yourself through your own self-cusseted wallet, lending out to the Morpho protocol.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fourth part is the yield that you get on the decentralized onion vault, where the yield is algorithmically set.
21:03
[SPEAKER_00]: and currently earns 7% on users that supply USDG to this lending protocol.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's a product that really are incredibly excited about.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: For users that are lending through robited earn, we've also announced insurance.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's underwritten by Lloyds of London and realm.
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: That covers users in the event of a cyber or smart contract exploit.
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's a product that we're incredibly excited about.
21:39
[SPEAKER_00]: We've heard from users that they're really excited about and yeah, excited to continue rolling it out.
21:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that's awesome.
21:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It definitely gives folks a diversified way to earn yield, you know, so many people are doing munibons or, you know, treasuries or corporate bonds.
21:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is just a different way to kind of layer in your source of yield, you know, so I think it's a great product really excited about it.
22:06
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been big fans of more foe and we had.
22:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Paul Frembo on the show, you know years ago, back before it was even, I think, before the token even launched, talking about this protocol.
22:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've been on it, you know, full disclosure, I have exposure to that.
22:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But let's jump over to the derivative side as well, because you've launched perpetual futures, which are a very cool product.
22:28
[SPEAKER_02]: in Europe with up to 10 times leverage.
22:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And I believe now you're starting to expand into commodities, ETFs, FX, tell us about what's going on on the derivative side.
22:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
22:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So we launched our crypto perpetual futures product in the EU from Robin of Europe, which is our European entity last year in Q3.
22:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's one of the fastest-growing products that we have in the EU.
23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think for a couple of reasons, one, I believe our experience is simple, easy to use for customers.
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, we've also made risk management understandable for someone who
23:23
[SPEAKER_00]: might be testing perpetual features for the first time.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Risk management is really important.
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a visual take-profit stop-loss.
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've seen some of the presentations that we've done on this, incredibly easy and simple to set risk limits on your positions.
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And the one of the biggest things that customers have been asking for
23:48
[SPEAKER_00]: is to expand perpetual futures and this experience that we've built into other exposure to other asset classes.
23:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we've launched oil contracts, ETF contracts on the QQQ, gold silver, as well as a EuroUSD contracts for FX.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Entity Robinhood Europe launched that I've our MIFIT 2 and that Entity also has a Mika License as well in Europe which is critical for safety on crypto and Yeah, excited to continue expanding expanding that out
24:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that you guys are becoming kind of a one-stop shop for everything, right?
24:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like it's becoming an everything app for finance, where you can trade tokenized assets, you can trade crypto, you can trade ETFs, you can trade individual stocks.
24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can trade just about anything and I think adding some of these different features such as different derivatives and futures and yield products for stablecoins makes it more
25:00
[SPEAKER_01]: competitive across the board.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I had a personal experience here recently where, again, going back to my original point, I've been transferring more money from different bank accounts or brokerages over to Robinhood, because I just think it makes sense.
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, why would I have money in a specific area where I can do a single thing?
25:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And it typically is at like a worse rate or a worse dynamic and one of my banks called me last week and they're like, hey, you know, are we doing everything good?
25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to check in this in that.
25:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, like the technology is all the evidence.
25:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, you're not doing things good.
25:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was like, I just told him.
25:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, listen, you guys are giving me like 1% on my like high yield savings account.
25:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, well, what are you getting elsewhere?
25:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Who are you using, I was like, well, I used Robinhood.
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, well, what are they giving you?
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I'm getting like, I forgot the exact thing.
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, you know, they're rock.
25:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like three to four percent.
25:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, oh, well, we just can't match that.
25:55
[SPEAKER_01]: We would like to be competitive.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We can put you away in this bond or this treasure or whatever it was.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll lock it away for a year.
26:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And you'll get two percent or whatever it was.
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I'm not good.
26:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, my money's liquid.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can get, you know, whatever it is, you know,
26:11
[SPEAKER_01]: plus.
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're just like, yeah, well, we just can't compete.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So if there's anything else we can do, have a good day.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, it.
26:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just like, all right, well, they're like, don't you like coming into our office where you could sit in our comfy chairs and drink up.
26:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it doesn't that make you want to stay?
26:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like, okay, you, you guys are so lost.
26:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Good luck.
26:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well,
26:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Until even the cash delivery feature that I think was announced last year, it's like even that.
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I can just have someone come to my house.
26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I have similar experience with just how frustrating, like, traditional finance and banking has been.
26:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I called my bank and I was like, hey, I'm, you know, long story short.
26:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going on a vacation coming up and I wanted to get some cash.
26:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And they had to order it because they're like, oh, we don't have the, you know, the bills that you want.
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, all right, cool.
26:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They called, they messed it up, didn't come, they messed it up again, didn't come.
26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're on the third time, and it was like, guys, you're a bank.
27:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just asking for like, it's a precaution, it's like not even that can happen.
27:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there will be more people getting fed up with this stuff.
27:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, there's an easier way to do it.
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you have to be more competitive if you're a triadfiber player, because if there isn't all in one alternative, why would people not gravitate towards that?
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, I'm biased here, but
27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, absolutely.
27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's all about Ali adding value for for customers.
27:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, and, you know, that's customer focus is our, uh, number one priority.
27:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, love it.
27:38
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's very clear.
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and one of the things that I thought was super cool that you guys have added recently, and then I've actually been experimenting with in my Robinhood account.
27:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I've started with the small, little bit of capital.
27:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to get it, uh, too crazy, uh,
27:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I could trade directly from my LLM, whether that's Claude or Proplexity, it's incredible because now you don't need to go scan through the options chain manually and say, okay, you know, what should I do if I want to get short this?
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the best implied volatility for the timeframe?
28:15
[SPEAKER_02]: What's my thing?
28:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just is so exhausting to do it manually all the time.
28:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you could go and you could talk to your LLM and say scan the Robin Hood's options chain or look for this certain event-driven thing.
28:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And it could go and sure it costs some money to run these searches on these different engines or with your subscription.
28:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But it is, it's a mind-blowing thing.
28:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it really is mind-blowing.
28:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want you to tell us a little bit about the capabilities of agentic trading.
28:45
[SPEAKER_02]: on Robinhood and you know maybe how you've used it or how some successful ways you've seen customers use it but also maybe color it with the crypto aspect of it too if people are allowed to type in you know buy one salana into their claw or whatever and it goes through the program and automatically buys it so you don't have to manually do it like tell us a little bit about how it is ingrained with crypto too.
29:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
29:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So the agentic trading feature on robited allows you to create what's called an agentic account where it's a separate account from your other accounts where you can essentially have it isolated and allows you to connect an agent of your choice through MCP model context protocol
29:38
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, you're account.
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The important thing about the way we've approached a gentle account centrating here at Robinhood is we put safety first.
29:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So, one, you know, it's in a separate account.
29:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a number of controls and safe guards in place to ensure that you're able to harness the full power of the agent so you're working with that you personally are bringing but also to do so in an environment that you feel is safe and you know the agent is not going to do something that you don't want them to do
30:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, this is a pretty simple to get started, right?
30:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You create your agenda account, you follow the instructions, it's pretty simple.
30:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You, as long as you have your own personal agenda set up, you can connect it.
30:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And
30:30
[SPEAKER_00]: As for crypto, so we are going to be rolling out crypto with an agentic account soon.
30:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So it'll enable the use cases that you mentioned.
30:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you wanted to buy crypto through your agent on Robinhood, you'd be able to do so.
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: as well, and it's something that we're really, really excited about.
30:54
[SPEAKER_00]: In terms of how I use it personally, I probably don't want to be sharing my personal investment strategies here, but it's really helpful when I'm trying to do analysis on my portfolio and figure out am I overallocated here versus elsewhere, and it's something I used to do in spreadsheets every month until this came out.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a, to a little bit about how I'm using it and using up a lot of my, my weekly credits from the agents.
31:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So now on on on the crypto stuff, do you see a future where people are going to be able to trade options on crypto through Robinhood.
31:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I think the products I were focused on when it comes to the revatives for crypto, as I mentioned, is the perpetual futures product that we have live in the EU.
31:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're always listening to customers, so while I can't speak to any definitive plans for crypto options in the future, we're always listening to customers and figuring out what's the best product to offer.
32:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but as of right now, our primary focus is the perpetual futures product that we...
32:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And honestly, the perpetual futures are just kind of a better product than options in general.
32:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's where future trend will kind of go is these perpetual futures.
32:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's so powerful in fact that I saw
32:32
[SPEAKER_02]: the CME is suing the CFTC for their allowance of all of these proliferating perpetual futures and so not that we need to comment on that much but it's just goes to show that it's a really powerful technology, easier way to get leverage, you don't need to use options.
32:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think perpetual futures is the right thing to lean into.
32:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but if we're going to talk about leverage and if we're going to talk about speculating, we got to talk about meme coins just because you're CEO again, I'm not putting words in his mouth.
33:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to quote him.
33:04
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, uh, Robin Hood chain is great for memes too.
33:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and this was on X, uh, in reference to somebody saying it's great for real world acid and stock tokens and he said it's great for memes too.
33:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was just wondering if if you can comment on any
33:23
[SPEAKER_02]: built by the community in terms of meme coins or just other projects, maybe people are already starting to glob on to Robinhood chain and build on there.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
33:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, generally speaking, the momentum is very exciting.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously always exciting to see a product that you've launched and people love to use that product.
33:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are loving to see the people that are building on the chain.
33:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And overall, we want to encourage developers to build on a chain as much as possible.
34:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Our focus, like I mentioned in the beginning of the call, is really focused on building the best chain for real world assets, for institutions to be able to bring financial workflows on chain.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: for a future where on-chain and tokens and financial systems are entirely on-chain, but the back end of how the financial financial ecosystem works.
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's really where our primary focus is, but we are generally speaking really excited to encourage more people to be building.
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: on the chain itself, in terms of, you know, partners that are, and applications that are alive on the chain, there's, you know, a number that we've already launched with, you know, privy and uniswap are live with AI agents and skills on the robin of chain.
34:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a number of data partners that make it easy to see what's going on on the chain.
35:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I know there's been some great dashboard shared as well.
35:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And lots of tokenization use cases that are already being built.
35:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, looking at partners like Liter and Arcus, who are decentralized perpetual exchanges, but also support a spot exchange on Robinhood Chain.
35:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're there.
35:23
[SPEAKER_00]: There's definitely a lot of momentum great developer communities building and excited to excited to see it and cash cat That was a wild run.
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I did see that there's a couple wild runs already, so yeah We saw that the DJs are active on around a job.
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I just say that Yeah, we're like we got to keep an eye on Robinhood chain.
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean these things are movement.
35:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it's great
35:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's wild, but you know, I know myself, I, again, do quite a bit of trading on Robinhood.
35:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially when it comes to the crypto side and I really like it.
35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to say the one thing that has stood out to me is that there can still tend to be some buy spreads.
36:06
[SPEAKER_01]: An example from recently, I was trading hype, which is one of the bigger and more well-known pretty liquid tokens now.
36:13
[SPEAKER_01]: That's out there and you know certainly one of the hot tokens in terms of trading, but it still had a buy spread of just under 1% as around 0.96% of a buy spread, which means that you know I was if the token price was $60, $70 and 11 cents the buy spread was saying hey you're gonna be buying it $67.73 So I'm almost always going to be playing more
36:36
[SPEAKER_01]: then whatever the actual trading price is, are there any plans to reduce the spreads of crypto trading, specifically for the non-tokenized crypto trading on Robinhood?
36:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are two ways today to trade crypto and robinid.
36:54
[SPEAKER_00]: The first is market maker routing, where orders and quotes are source from market makers.
37:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way we earn revenue is that for every dollar of no additional crypto order volume executed through market maker routing, we robinid crypto receives 90% from its market maker.
37:14
[SPEAKER_00]: The second is smart exchange routing with MakerTakerFees, where your order is routed directly to our partner exchanges at BitStamp and EDX and is executed directly on the exchange order books.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So this routing method is geared a bit more towards pro traders who want direct access to order-book liquidity and the quotes that you're getting there.
37:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And also offers a tiered pricing where MakerFees drop as low as 0% for high-volume traders with no added spreads.
37:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can't give advice on which routing option is better for customers.
38:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But it does depend on the type of trading experience that you're looking for and yeah, that's, that's, that's what I say.
38:08
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you say that you can toggle between which one you want to choose between those.
38:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you can, you can toggle this and the way that you do this is.
38:17
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, in the when you go to trade crypto there we have a settings and the trade flow at the top right and that allows you to talk on and off so maybe you'll give it a try after this after this call and should be an email if you have any if you have any feedback.
38:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely will because I was just tasked over here from other members of our team saying, hey, Brennan, we just saw all these new Robinhood updates, go make some videos on this stuff.
38:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this will be out soon, which is why I had to ask, because I was floating around and I was going back and forth and, no, that's perfect.
38:49
[SPEAKER_02]: you're cheating on your homework no it's great yeah obviously everybody who's watching on Spotify or wherever it check out our crypto one-on-one podcast youtube channel Brendan myself the team we do a bunch of different educational walkthroughs on different protocols and
39:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, Robin Hood, so we'll have those up very soon.
39:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Look, song, I mean, this has been awesome.
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: We've covered a lot of ground.
39:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to kind of hand over to you in case I didn't, or we didn't ask you about something that you wanted to highlight, is there anything else out there in terms of the current slate of products and initiatives that we didn't cover that you wanted to talk about?
39:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think we covered the big moments and the major items that we launched last, I want to say two weeks ago, it's been a little bit of a blur past two weeks.
39:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe the only other things that I'll call out is, you know, Robin is now available in Canada for crypto trading as well, so very, very excited about nice, about that experience.
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think we covered all the right items.
40:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, beautiful.
40:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, something that was not discussed, but it's still a big initiative on Robinhood.
40:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not sure if it's really Robinhood crypto, but we just wanted to shine some light on Robinhood's engagement with the Trump accounts, because for those of us who have kids, we think that's a really, really, really awesome program.
40:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
40:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have anything to say about about the Trump accounts or a quick blur or should we just let the folks know that if they have kids, they could sign up and on the back end Robinhood is kind of powering a lot of it.
40:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I don't have any too much to say on that one, you know, I'm expecting father soon as well, so I'm really, really excited for this.
40:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Congrats.
40:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's huge.
40:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, man.
40:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's there's nothing better for long time listeners know I've got two little crazy kids running around and it's it's fun.
41:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I would just say start your start getting as much
41:07
[SPEAKER_02]: in the lead-up.
41:08
[SPEAKER_02]: One other thing that I actually, I started, this is totally a side tangent, but again, I'm going through with chatGPT and all this kind of stuff, trying to figure out how to get better cognitive function while I'm sleep deprived, essentially.
41:22
[SPEAKER_02]: In creatine, about three grams to five grams of creatine every day is not just great for muscle growth, and this isn't like a plug.
41:31
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't have a promotion for anything.
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: which maybe if anybody's listening, who's a health person, we can get a plug for creatine.
41:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's actually a great thing.
41:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been feeling like a lot better taking it and they say it's great for cognitive function on sleep deprived people.
41:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So, creatine, check it out, song.
41:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, not nutrition advice, but I took talk once that when you're asleep deprived.
41:55
[SPEAKER_00]: should I should be taking 20 grams of creatine that day?
42:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Load it up.
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Not nutrition or health advice.
42:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So in you definitely you will definitely be on the toilet with a very upset stomach if you do do it.
42:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, so this is such a fun, fun podcast to be able to have you on.
42:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Look, I mean,
42:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we've got everybody who knows where to find you robinhood.com.
42:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have a personal Twitter account or an ex account?
42:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you blog?
42:28
[SPEAKER_02]: How can people kind of stay along with your journey and all the different announcements that you have?
42:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think following the Robinhood app and Robinhood crypto account or the best way to do that, you know, my, I don't, I don't really post, I'm not a big Twitter person, so, okay, your builder, your heads down, we get it.
42:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Cool, we thank you so much for coming on the show, thank you to the whole team at Robin Hood.
42:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been awesome working with you guys and we hope to have you back on next quarter or the quarter after that whenever you guys have big announcements or big things you want to tease to the crypto world.
43:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know where to find us, we'd love to have you back.
43:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome, thanks for having me on.
43:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome, and everybody who spent the time listening today, whether it was YouTube, Spotify, we really, really appreciate your support and your engagement.
43:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Come back, same time, same place next week, and I promise you we're gonna have some more great guests.
43:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Take care.