Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood SVP and General Manager of Crypto, discusses the company's crypto plans and new tools for advanced traders. He tells Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld on "The Close" that Robinhood plans to expand crypto features, including allowing users to manually add cost basis for crypto deposits, with a strong focus on serving advanced traders.

California

Robinhood has observed varied crypto trading activity among its users, with younger investors continuing to buy despite recent price declines. The company recently launched Solana staking for New York customers and introduced advanced trading features, including low fees for high-volume traders and tools to help users manage crypto tax obligations.

In Europe, Robinhood remains mobile app-only but plans to introduce a web platform and additional features such as perpetual contracts. The company is also exploring tokenized assets, aiming to leverage blockchain technology to improve financial systems and broaden access to crypto products in both the U.S. and EU.

Robinhood's on 2026 crypto plans for U.S., EU

So let's first talk about what you're seeing in terms of sentiment and activity. We know that the past couple of months have certainly been rough for crypto in terms of price action. How is that translated through into trading volumes. Yeah that's really true. Like the price have come down quite a bit. But what we see from our customer base is really depending on the segment that you're looking at for a lot of our customer. They are on the younger side and so they have a price horizon that is a bit longer than you know some people. And so for them they are looking at buying deep opportunity. And so they are still investing quite a bit. What we see also from other segment is that they are looking into options to stake their assets and get yield on the cryptocurrency. But overall what is a good sign for us is that we still see a lot of people buying on Robin Hood and then transferring into defy showing that there is still a lot of activity on the crypto networks. Let's talk about staking a little bit. I'm taking a look at the notes you sent to our producers and you know that Robin Hood even Solana staking went live for New York customers on December 9th. It's only been a couple of days of course. But what has that uptake looked like so far. And if you can give us any numbers that would be great. Yeah I think it's too soon for the numbers just because we we only recently launched it. But that was something that we're really excited about for New York for a very long time. Our customer could not access crypto transfer and staking. And so we think it's early holiday gift for them that they are able to do it in New York now. John can you talk a little bit also just about some of the add on features particularly designed to help crypto investors kind of navigate the complexities of tax law particularly here in the United States. When do those roll out. Have folks started to use them yet. And to what degree. Yeah. So on Robin Hood it's one of the only platform where you can actually get a 10 99 at the end of the year. Well at least at the beginning of next year for your tax season. And we give it to you for free. You don't need to have a subscription or anything like that. But one thing that we start to notice is that people that are very active on defy are starting to lose track of their car spaces. So we roll out this feature where you can actually input a tax base. The cost basis of your purchase just to help the customer manager taxes. But I think for us one of the main focus this year has been to really push on advanced traders. The people that are a bit more than just you know the normal customer just focusing on buying or selling a little bit of crypto once in a while. And we really push on new features for the people who are trading you know tens of thousands of crypto a day or up to millions a day. And so now we have one of the lowest fee at three basis point for this like very advanced trader. So that was something that we were really exciting about because for a very long time people thought about Robin Hood as more of a platform for simpler investor. And so we wanted to make sure that even advanced investor have all the platform and all the tools that they need for that. What's the difference between how you're structuring that here in the United States versus what you're doing with your products over in Europe. It's it's similar in the sense of in the U.S. you have different volumes here. So based on how much you're going to trade on a monthly basis and what version of our trading system you're going to use you will have a lower fee in Europe. Right now we still have only one fee but it's something that we will bring also in the future. So definitely something that's coming there. Let's talk about Robin Hood's presence in Europe a little bit more because it's interesting to think about the differences versus your presence in the United States. For example I see that Robin Hood is still mobile app only in the EU. When might we expect that to change. Yes we are going to start throwing out the web experience in the next couple of weeks for our customers. And really the decision behind this was getting and meeting our customer where they are. And so we saw that a lot of our European customer wanted a better mobile experience and what the competitors were offering. And so that's why we brought out mobile first. But they also have features that we don't have in the U.S. So for example perpetual is something that we do not offer in the in the U.S. and our European customers are able to access multiple contracts and up to 7x in average. So Joanne talk a little bit here as sort of you evolve and more importantly I guess as the institutional individual investor space involves a deeper over the next couple of years here is this going to be a meaningful accretion overall to Robin Hood's business or have we kind of reached to a certain extent for lack of a better phrase critical mass with regards to users. No I think you know we are just at the beginning. If you look about what our competitors are doing is just starting to add crypto to their platform showing that you know still for the longest time in the U.S. you have the majority of the population that do not have access to crypto. And I think you're also at the beginning of using the technology to actually replace the traditional finance system. We started to do it in the EU with tokenized assets like stock tokens that give you an exposure to U.S. stocks and ETF. And that's basically the the beginning of how we can use a blockchain technology to accelerate and improve our current system that is still shutting down over the weekend or where you still have to wait one business day to settle.

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