Robinhood Chain was just launched three weeks ago and has already reached $450 million in TVL. I'm with the man behind it today for a special edition of The Daily Wolf. Let's go.
What is up everybody? Welcome to the Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I'm your host Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of all streets and as you can see, we are not in the studio today and not covering the news of the day because we have the opportunity to speak with a very special guest. I've got Johan Kerbrat here from Robin Hood, the SVP GM of crypto plus some other things.
Yeah, that's right. How are you Scott?
We got to get you a longer title. I think I think we we need to give you more jobs. So, listen, you and I've been talking for years. Uh it seems like something fundamentally changed in the last month with the with the launch of Robin Hood chain and it seems like you guys have really lit a fire under the entire crypto world here.
Yeah, we are really excited. You know, I think for a long time, there was a lot of talk around tokenization and about how people are going to use the blockchain technology and now it's finally here. We are seeing a lot of usage on the chain. It's launched since July 1st. Already more than 95 million transaction, 450 million in TVL like you mentioned, and we also launched a product called Robin and Earn where you can get approximately 7% on stable coin and we're already passed 100 million from retail customers. So really exciting launch.
So let's start at the 450 million TVL total value locked for for for those who may not know what the term means. Where is that coming from? How much would you say is crypto natives who have bridged over to be a part of the exciting new launch and how many are Robin Hood customers who maybe don't even, you know, have not touched DeFi before any of this and just want access to the earn product, for example.
Yeah, that's a combination. So the own product is definitely a big part of it. At least 100 million is already from the retail customer and you also have institution to back it up behind. You also have people that are starting D5 for the first time. They want to try the stock tokens that we launched, they want to try also some of the meme coin that are available on the chain. Um and we also have, you know, all the D5 people that actually came over from different chain. Um I think the activity that we've seen in the past two weeks really grabbed a lot of attention and so because of that we saw a lot of bridging between different chain to the Robin chain.
So on the earn product, I want to talk about that. So you're offering effectively 7 7%, right? I found it so interesting that we're having this massive debate in Washington over stable coin yield and the banks are fighting with the industry and the clarity act, you know, many people believe hinges on that, although I think it's ethics. And here you are, you know, 7% safe yield, you know, and so I mean, talk about that product. Where does it come from? How do you do it? Who's who's using it?
Right. Um so it's a it's a lending protocol, so it's not exactly uh fully safe. There are risks that are involved with it. Uh we're partnering with one of the main protocol called Morpho. Uh and we're really excited about it because I think Morpho has been able to create this um in between the safe yield and also a pretty high percentage with a bit of risk. So uh we are very excited about that. What we did that is very unique is we wanted to focus on the stable percentage and so the the return that we're giving right now is about 7%.
Um with the time it will change, but it will change really in step logs, not just like every hour like some of all the competitors. The other thing that we are really worried about was around the safety and security. A lot of people, you know, when they think about DFI, they think about smart contract acts or issues that you can have with vault and this kind of thing. So what we wanted to do is find an insurance that will give some uh safety net for our customer.
And so that way we think we combine high yield and also the safety aspect to really bring a product that we can bring to the masses of Robinhood. Um and the the product is offered within the main app of Robinhood. So it's 26 or 27 million funded account that have access to this product now.
And it's super easy, right? So I think that might be the big unlocked here is that it's on the main platform and you just push a couple buttons and it's done, right? Because I think that's always been our problem. UX UI, confusion, private keys.
Yeah, exactly. That's been our bread and butter, making complicated problem very easy to use. So here you will get from your dollar into stable coin into landing into a vault uh right away, um in just a few taps. And same thing when you want to remove the the assets from the lending pool, you can actually pull them and then very quickly will be available to you as a as a user.
What does that look like? You're a Robin Hood user, you open your app and what do you do?
Yeah, just on the main screen, actually, if you scroll a little bit, you will see uh Robin Earn and you will see the 7% and that rate will change um as soon as you know, there is a change there. And the very cool product I think here is also that whatever you're lending, let's say you you land $1,000, uh you will see the amount updating real time with the vault. So every 5, six seconds, you will see your your capital actually increasing and compounding. So I think that's really cool.
So, this is obviously the first iteration of what you're going to do, right? You've you've launched it, you've just I've imagined you've got big plans for what you're going to do on Robin Hood chain. So, obviously, as we mentioned before, you have kind of the crypto people come over and they start doing what crypto people do, launching NFTs and memes and having a good time. But I think you and Vlad and the messaging has been very RWA tokenization future of finance focused.
So I mean, you know, how do you plan for that? What do you have coming?
Yeah, and to be clear like we we welcome the memes. I think a lot of people are asking me, you know, are you surprised by the meme activity or or what are you thinking about it? And really for us, I think it's a great way to bring a lot of these define native people, to bring market makers, to bring TVL into the chain and then they can actually cross to some of our other products that are also interesting. Uh tokenized asset is really what we we've been thinking a lot about stock token.
Uh we launched a lot of our uh stock token um that are available 24/7 and on DeFi. It's available in 120 plus countries on our Robin wallet, which is the the wallet official for the chain. Um and you can trade on weekends for example on stocks and you know, when something is happening on the weekend like like last weekend, the fact that you're able to actually buy and sell uh the stock tokens is actually really giving you optionality on how to hedge your portfolio, how to invest when there's something happening in the world.
There've been a lot of approaches to tokenization. Sometimes voting rights and or otherwise, sometimes it's just a wrapped version. How do you approach that?
Yeah, so those are um back one to one. Um if at some point Robin Hood has an issue or let's say Robin in the absolute uh worst case scenario we'll go bankrupt. You still have uh every asset uh that are available for you as a customer. You don't have voting right, but you get dividend, corporate action, everything else. Um and I think that's been really interesting because that was one of the uh discussion we were having when we launched our first version of the stock token, people were a little worried about what will happen if Robin Hood has an issue.
And so this new version is fully DeFi, available 24/7, uh instant settlement and on top of that, uh you're you're safe with it.
I mean, it sounds like you're trying to make everything available 24/7 365 to everybody, everything app, right? And and so who's trading those right now? Is that, you know, people who have an e-trade account? Are they trading tokenized stocks? Or is it for people in foreign countries right now that don't have access to the US equity market?
Yeah, currently it's not available in the US. So it's available in 120 plus countries, not the US, but we are seeing a lot of these people actually being a bit excluded from the market because time zone, because it's too expensive to actually connect to Nasdaq or Nice, you have to pay commissions still in a lot of places. Um and so these people are excited to be able to do that. And again, like the 24/7 aspects on weekend is really, really important.
Um for us, we think it's a future. You know, I think at the end of the day this idea that the market stop on weekend, stop at night, like doesn't really make sense. The fact that you can't access to all the stocks in every exchange in the world is also not making sense. It's bidding liquidity, it's making it harder for you to access the stocks that you're excited about in a world that is becoming more and more global. Um so I think for us it's this idea, everything should be available to everyone, uh 24/7 and they should decide what is good for them or not.
And what happens when all these assets are, you know, commingled in a single portfolio? Do we eventually get to the point where you can take, you know, security loan against the entire portfolio, you know, and it's really just one Right one big Absolutely.
Absolutely. I think we are already seeing some people using that on Dexes, so they use their stock token as collateral. Uh, we are seeing some of our partners that are also offering that. Uh lighter, for example, is a partner for us for perpetuals and you can use your stock token as collateral. So you can actually take different strategies, you can hedge your portfolio using perpetuals and at the same time keep uh your stock token uh because you want to, you know, wait for long-term gain or something like this. So, um, I think we're just at the very beginning of whatever Defi is going to offer in the future.
I see a world where every asset will be tokenized and available to everyone. And at the end of the day, we think that having the Robin chain as the uh infrastructure layer will allow us to really build these features that are very easy to use, very simple, with a good UX and UI for our customers.
How much does the clarity act matter for you?
I think it does. You know, it's really important for us to have a level playing field in the US. Right now we have features that are available in some states, I mean, some are not available in some other states. And I think it's frustrating for our customer. Like they just want to be able to access the features that they they care about. Um so I think this clarity act is really important. I think it's a bit uh ridiculous, you know, that we are blocking it on this idea that stable coin should not uh generate yield for customers.
Uh you know, if we think about it, a lot of customers they want the FDC insurance, they want to be able to think that their money is safe. So they they're already using their banking accounts, they're not trying to to get the the highest yield possible. Otherwise they will use feature like like the one we launched. Um so I think at the end of the day we are we are penalizing people that want to utilize crypto and blockchain technology uh because for stable coin, it's a lot easier to send, it's a lot easier to transfer 24/7, all of this. So it's not really fair that we are penalizing those customers.
I think they'd be psyched if they got one and a half or 2%.
Right. Not everybody's looking for seven, they're just looking to not get nothing.
Exactly. Right now it's it's the reality, right? It's like you can get nothing or you can get something with cash. So what people are doing is as soon as they get stable, they sell it to get cash and to get a yield. And so it doesn't make sense. It's not it's not optimized for the stable coin issuer, it's not optimized for the customers. Um, and so I think we need to we need to fix this.
I had the misfortune of having to walk into a bank last week to deposit a check and they tried to pitch me on they're like, we can 4X this by opening a savings account your yield and it was and I looked it was like .1 to .4.
Hard times you got to get it where you can, but yeah, it's absurd.
And and that's where, you know, I think tokenization, blockchain technology will will change this traditional finance system. Uh we're already seeing it. We're already seeing that with blockchain and crypto, a lot of the legacy player are starting to think about it. You saw nice, Nasdaq starting to think about what is our crypto strategy. You saw DTC as well. So, I think it's really important that we keep pushing as company like Robin Hood uh to bring more customers and more retail into this world because that will also bring the institution on the other end and will stop this discussion on what if or what is the stable coin strategy and we'll just think about how do we take advantage of the situation.
Obviously, there's a major AI push as well, not just people wanting to buy uh Nvidia, but utilizing AI and I think a gentic trading is one of the sort of frontier ideas and you're pioneering that as well. What are you doing on that side?
Yeah, we just recently launched an MCP that you can connect your agent to and it will be able to connect your portfolio on Robin Hood and place orders or uh whatever you kind of want to do with your Robin account. Um we are launching crypto as well inside the MCP very soon. and I think it's really interesting because a lot of customer want to build agents, they are actually really excited about it. And so far they were using APIs that are kind of under the hood of platform like Robin Hood and, you know, they were not really getting the the best user experience for their agent.
So now they can actually decide the strategy that they want to use on their agents and connect to our MCP that is official. You can put guard rails in place, you can limit the amount of money that the agents will be able to access. Uh you have different settings that you can uh toggles to make sure that, you know, it's acting like you want. But um I think in this world where more and more customers are looking to get information and to looking to act fast on the market, it's really important. The other thing that we're doing on AI is really giving you information.
We have a product called Dex uh that is giving you digest for your stock, your crypto, your entire portfolio. and instead of you having to look at the news and everything going on, every time you see a notification that, you know, your stock is up or down, um all this information is fed into you and you have sources if you want to go deeper into it. I think that's really important because it levels a playing field between uh the analysts that have like room full of people that are looking at all the information of Bloomberg terminal, um and the normal retail customer that, you know, until now was like trying to catch up with the news on Twitter and on Google.
I mean, is that where the entire trend goes? Is it my agent versus your agent on a deck, flipping meme coins back and forth at each other and we're just, you know, on a beach drinking cocktails hoping for the best?
You know, I think if uh that's the worst case scenario and that's the strategy you want to do, I think it doesn't sound too bad.
We've got it just over a minute left. I mean, anything else that's coming that you you want to tell the audience about?
Well, we're also really excited to bring Robin Hood internationally. We just launched in Canada. Uh, we can trade up to 50 assets with no fee for now. Um and it's really exciting. It's part of our acquisition of Wonderfi. We also received our license in Singapore and so, you know, we are trying to bring Robin Hood also on the centralized uh space everywhere in the world.
I mean, quickly, what does it take to be able to offer the exact same product everywhere?
It takes a lot of work, a lot of licenses, a lot of uh, you know, making sure we can adapt the product to the customer base in that country because everyone has different needs, different tax wrapper, different uh payments rails and these kind of things. But uh we're excited to bring Robin everywhere.
I can't imagine how many lawyers you have to have in each of these jurisdictions to get that done. Well, as you heard it here directly from uh Johan live in person, Robin Hood Chain growing and growing exceptionally fast. and I think uh really giving us a window into the future of what's likely to come from Robin Hood and from the market in general. That's it for today. We will be on location all week for these amazing interviews. I'll see you tomorrow for the next daily Wolf. Peace.