Robinhood Tokenized Stocks Explained: How Stock Tokens Work…

Robinhood brought tokenized stock trading to European investors in June 2025, placing more than 200 US equities and ETFs on the Arbitrum network. Chief executive Vlad Tenev described the launch as groundwork for crypto to become the backbone of the global financial system. Robinhood shares rose 4% to $91 on the announcement.

Each token is backed one-to-one by a share that Robinhood buys and holds in custody, so the token tracks the underlying price and passes dividends through as cash payouts in the app. Custom smart contracts use rebasing multipliers to process stock splits, reverse splits and special distributions automatically, holding tokens at spot parity. Trading runs 24/5 with zero commissions. Steven Goldfeder, cofounder of Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs, said many European users do not need to know or care that crypto sits underneath.

Economic exposure, not ownership

The structural limit is that token holders receive price appreciation and dividends but no voting rights and no direct legal ownership of the underlying shares, which sit in a special-purpose vehicle controlled by Robinhood. The rebasing design of the original Classic Stock Tokens on Arbitrum does not fully satisfy ERC-20 standards, restricting their use in some DeFi applications — a constraint analysts read as a deliberate compliance choice that keeps tokens inside Robinhood's regulatory perimeter.

Robinhood launched its own Layer 2, Robinhood Chain, on July 1, 2026, built on Arbitrum's technology stack. New Stock Tokens issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Ltd trade 24/7 on the network and can be self-custodied through Robinhood Wallet, and they are supported in lending pools and as trading collateral across DeFi venues including Uniswap, Lighter, 1inch and Arcus. Partner platform Arcus added 95 tokenized stocks in 2026. The offering has since grown past 2,000 stock tokens, and Robinhood Chain has topped rival platforms in daily decentralized exchange volume.

Regulation remains the gating factor for US access. The SEC closed its investigation into Robinhood's crypto operations in February 2025, and on September 17, 2026 it issued an innovation exemption giving qualifying tokenized NMS stocks a five-year route onto permissioned automated market makers, subject to symbol and volume limits. Robinhood still does not offer Stock Tokens to US users, and its European crypto and tokenized stock business operates under a Lithuanian license within the MiCA framework. The company also handed out tokens tied to OpenAI and SpaceX in a limited June 2025 giveaway, though OpenAI said those tokens did not represent its equity.