Robinhood (HOOD) has taken a major step toward enabling 24/7 stock trading—at least in Europe. The trading platform announced Monday that it has launched U.S. stock and ETF tokens for customers in the European Union during an event in Cannes, France. European users will now have access to over 200 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, with dividends paid directly through the Robinhood app.
The move marks a significant evolution for Robinhood’s European platform, shifting it from a crypto-only app to a more comprehensive investment tool that now includes tokenized equities. The stock tokens will initially be issued on the Arbitrum blockchain, with plans to transition to Robinhood’s own layer-two blockchain, which the company says is being developed to enable around-the-clock trading.
“We believe we can get that done [24/7 trading in the EU] within the next few months,” Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev said in an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Market Domination. “For our EU customers, at least that’s the goal. And you already have it with crypto assets. So these stock tokens powered by crypto technology will use the same underlying infrastructure. So once they’re available on Bitstamp, we believe will unlock 24/7 trading. So you’ll get the Saturdays and the holidays. And I think that would be very compelling.”
Tokenization—the creation of a digital representation of real-world assets like stocks, art, or real estate—has been gaining momentum in financial services. Major firms such as BlackRock (BLK) and Franklin Templeton are already applying the technology to money market funds. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has become an outspoken proponent of the trend.
“The world’s money moves through plumbing built when trading floors still shouted orders and fax machines felt revolutionary,” Fink wrote in his shareholder letter earlier this year.
Consulting firm McKinsey estimates tokenized markets could reach a market cap of around $2 trillion by 2030, excluding cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and stablecoins.
While the EU may soon enjoy 24/7 stock trading, Tenev noted that regulatory approval in the U.S. will likely take longer.
“I’ve talked about the need for 24/7 markets in the U.S for quite some time. It would be a shame for the EU to get there first. But I think the U.S. wants to catch up. We’ve been having a lot of conversations with the regulators,” Tenev said. “We think actually the SEC has the ability to make this happen. So we’re going to continue to collaborate with them to bring it to the U.S.”
At the same event, Robinhood also introduced crypto perpetual futures for its European customers. The announcements fueled investor enthusiasm, pushing shares up more than 12% Monday.
Robinhood has been actively broadening its product offerings beyond stock trading. Since its 2013 founding by Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, the platform has launched Robinhood Banking for checking and savings accounts, Robinhood Strategies for wealth management, and a prediction market feature allowing users to bet on events like Federal Reserve moves or sports outcomes. Last year, the company also rolled out futures and index options trading.
These strategic expansions appear to be paying off: Robinhood shares are up 151% year-to-date, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 5% gain and Coinbase’s (COIN) 41% rise.
“In our view, Robinhood has successfully migrated from a fast growing, periodically profitable online broker servicing mostly younger investors, to a best-in-class top and bottom-line asset under custody compounder with a growing total addressable market (TAM),” Goldman Sachs analyst James Yaro said. “In the near-to-medium-term, we see growth driven by continued wallet share gains among highly-profitable active traders, and a long-term opportunity to expand Robinhood’s TAM into areas, such as wealth and internationally.”
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