Is an investment revolution coming to Europe? They want to be the "backbone of the global financial system"

According to Bloomberg, Robinhood will own the shares securing the tokens, while token holders will enjoy most of the benefits of the underlying security, such as dividends.

“It’s time for cryptocurrencies to go beyond bitcoin and memecoin and introduce some basic utility,” Robinhood Chief Executive Vlad Tenev said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday.

“We believe that in the future, cryptocurrencies and traditional financial services will completely merge, and cryptocurrencies will become the infrastructure layer behind all kinds of financial services, from payments, which are starting to appear with stablecoins, to deposit storage,” he added.

Blockchain-listed assets are becoming increasingly popular

Tokenized securities – assets listed on a blockchain whose value reflects the value of the underlying stocks – are gaining popularity among international investors.

Exchange-traded shares are available to investors in most parts of Europe , but proponents of tokenized versions argue that they provide the benefits of shares, including dividends and stock splits, with greater transparency, and transactions settle instantly.

For Menlo Park, California-based Robinhood, the new equity tokens mark a major expansion into the European Union . Until now, the company’s customers there have only had access to cryptocurrency trading.

It also gives the brokerage the ability to experiment with products that are in regulatory limbo in the U.S. and not widely available. It’s a way for Robinhood and others to potentially minimize the costs associated with traditional market infrastructure , since trading takes place on a transparent blockchain platform rather than an exchange.

"The United States Wants to Catch the Rest of the World in the Cryptocurrency Industry"

Tenev, speaking at a product update event held at a château in Cannes, France, said cryptocurrencies are more than just speculative assets.

The United States, after years of trying to destroy the cryptocurrency industry, is finally ready to catch up with the rest of the world, Tenev said. "The US has the potential to become the backbone of the global financial system," he added.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Tenev reiterated his belief in the future of American cryptocurrencies.

- We believe that there is no need for additional regulations. The SEC has the mandate, the authority, for securities tokenization to take place, he said. - And they are willing to do it .

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken said it would soon offer tokenized securities to its international clients, and executives at companies like Galaxy Digital have conferred with U.S. regulators to tokenize its own shares as well as those of other companies. In recent years, financial giants like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo Global Management have also launched tokenized funds.

Robinhood’s tokenized shares will be issued on Arbitrum , an ethereum-based blockchain, until the company deploys its own Robinhood Layer 2 blockchain, based on Arbitrum. Robinhood recently completed the acquisition of Bitstamp, a cryptocurrency exchange in Europe.

The company will also launch cryptocurrency futures in Europe by the end of the summer. The derivative allows investors to predict the price of an asset without setting an end date for speculation.