When Wall Street sank into midnight on June 30, a platform once viewed as a 'retail toy' by traditional brokers—Robinhood—dropped a deep-water bomb into the global financial system. It announced the launch of tokenized U.S. stock and ETF trading in 30 European countries, covering more than 200 popular stocks like Apple and NVIDIA; simultaneously launching crypto staking and perpetual contracts. More critically, a Layer 2 blockchain network specifically designed for tokenized assets, 'Robinhood Chain', is under development. Once the news broke, Robinhood's stock price surged by 12%, with an increase of over 100% since the beginning of the year—markets cast a vote of confidence in the revolutionary financial paradigm with real money.
1. What is Stock Tokenization? Dissecting the 'Gene Map' of a New Financial Species.
Stock tokenization is not merely a trick of asset on-chain, but a deep restructuring of traditional equity structures with blockchain as the scalpel. Each token represents a real share of stock, anchored 1:1 to the underlying asset by compliant custodians (such as Backed Finance) and supports on-chain audit verification. Compared to traditional stocks, its technical advantages create a crushing gap:
- Time Dimension: Breaking the rigid rule of '9 to 4' trading hours, achieving 24/7 trading from Monday to Friday;
- Spatial Dimension: EU users can trade U.S. stocks with just a crypto wallet and stablecoins, without needing U.S. identity, bank accounts, or complicated cross-border processes;
- Cost Dimension: Robinhood offers fragmented investments starting from €1, with foreign exchange fees at only 0.1%, far lower than traditional brokers.
When Brazilian students purchase 0.01 shares of Tesla tokens on-chain to participate in the global tech dividend, and Southeast Asian youth use USDC to create custom ETF strategy matrices, **financial inclusion** transforms from a slogan into a tangible reality for the first time.
2. Dimensional Attack: The 'vital point' of traditional finance is precisely pierced.
The operational logic of traditional stock markets reveals structural vulnerabilities in the face of the tokenization wave. Its core pain points are being dismantled one by one by blockchain technology:
- Clearing Efficiency: The traditional T+2 settlement mechanism is replaced by second-level settlement, with capital turnover efficiency skyrocketing by a thousand times;
- Liquidity Islands: Tokenized stocks can be embedded in DeFi protocols, allowing users to simultaneously utilize Tesla tokens for staking, lending, liquidity mining, and NFT social tagging—single assets achieving multi-scenario value fragmentation for the first time;
- Power Reconstruction: Traditional securities accounts rely on identity verification and capital licensing, while tokenized equity only requires a signature from an on-chain address. Giants like JPMorgan and Citibank have already laid out their plans for RWA (Real World Assets) tokenization, but the open ecosystem's replacement of the closed system is now irreversible.
This impact is directly reflected in market data: After the smart exchange launched on-chain stock tokens, 3 million new users joined within 24 hours (60% from Asia, Africa, and Latin America), and trading volume surged by 60%; the total market value of stock tokenization surpassed $350 million in April 2025, with experts predicting that reaching a trillion-dollar scale is only a matter of time.
3. Regulatory Breakthrough: A thrilling leap from the gray area to a federal framework.
Regulation has long been the 'Sword of Damocles' over tokenized assets, but the policy ice is accelerating its thaw by 2025:
- The EU awards Robinhood a Lithuanian license under the MiCA regulations, opening compliance channels across 30 countries;
- The pro-crypto U.S. government promotes the (GENIUS Act), and Robinhood has actively submitted a 42-page proposal to the SEC, calling for the establishment of a federal-level RWA tokenization framework, asserting that 'tokenized stocks hold the same legal status as traditional stocks';
- Switzerland and Singapore are the first to recognize the legality of tokenized securities, with institutions like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton entering the market, driving RWA-Fi locked volume to a peak of $262 million in Q3 2024.
When Microsoft submits its S-1 application for tokenized stocks in May 2025, the convergence of traditional giants and regulators marks the beginning of a new era's compliance blueprint.
4. The Future Battle: A new financial order under L2 infrastructure and institutional competition.
Tokenization competition has escalated to the infrastructure level. Robinhood has chosen to build a dedicated L2 chain based on Arbitrum Orbit, targeting three strategic goals:
1. Composable Finance: Stock tokens can serve as DeFi Lego components, participating in lending, derivatives, and other complex strategies;
2. All-weather Market: 7x24 hours of trading matches global time zones, allowing office workers in London and housewives in Singapore to trade Apple stocks simultaneously;
3. Cross-chain Self-Custody: Users gain control over their assets, bidding farewell to the 'account freeze' risk of brokers.
At the same time, the institutional arms race is heating up: Coinbase seeks SEC approval to issue on-chain stocks in the U.S.; Kraken supports 60 U.S. stocks for 24/7 trading; BlackRock is seizing the treasury market through its $BUIDL tokenized fund. When Arbitrum's RWA locked volume exceeds $260 million, and when Spiko Finance's EU treasury token $EUTBL captures a 32% market share, a parallel financial system composed of **on-chain clearing layers, tokenized assets, and smart contracts** has already emerged.
The watershed moment in financial history often arrives silently. When Lithuanian students buy 0.001 shares of SpaceX tokens using their phones, when Brazilian farmers split soybean revenue rights into NFTs circulating on the Solana chain, and when Robinhood Chain compresses trading flows from New York, London, and Hong Kong into the same second-level ledger—traditional finance's **geographic barriers, time barriers, and capital thresholds** are being systematically dismantled by blockchain technology.
It is predicted that by 2030, the global scale of tokenized assets will exceed $18 trillion, while today, the proportion of stock tokenization is still less than 1%. The outcome of Robinhood's late-night raid is not a victory for a single company, but a **Cambrian explosion** belonging to on-chain finance—when stocks become programmable, splittable, and combinable digital primitives, the wave of decentralization of financial power has only just begun to roll.
> History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes: Ten years ago, Wall Street harvested retail investors using algorithms;
> Ten years later, retail investors will use tokens to reshape Wall Street.
1> Reference source: Compiled from Robinhood's official announcements, industry analysis, and regulatory dynamics, with data as of July 1, 2025.
