Customers will have access to Stock Tokens respresenting more than 200 different companies and be able to trade them 24 hours a day, five days a week. The blockchain-based stocks will initially be issued on Arbitrum, a so-called layer 2 blockchain built on top of Ethereum.

Robinhood plans to eventually move the tokenized stocks over to its own layer 2 chain that it described in its press release as being “based on Arbitrum.” Layer 2 chains are built atop primary blockchains like Ethereum, and are typically faster and more efficient to use.

Robinhood didn’t specify when it would launch its new blockchain, but it said the new chain plans to support trading 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “Our latest offerings lay the groundwork for crypto to become the backbone of the global financial system,” Robinhood chairman and CEO Vlad Tenev said in a statement.

Crypto expansion

Robinhood’s tokenized stock offering and planned blockchain comes as part of a broader push by the firm to expand its crypto products offering under a newly friendly regulatory regime in Washington, D.C. 

After President Donald Trump, who’s called himself a “pro-crypto president,” won reelection in November, Robinhood reinstated many of the cryptocurrencies, including Solana and XRP, that it had delisted from its platform. It took down the digital assets from its app after the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged in 2023 lawsuits the tokens were unregistered securities.

Once Trump assumed office in January, his administration issued a series of pro-crypto executive orders. The SEC also reconfigured its crypto enforcement arm as well as dropped a series of high-profile lawsuits and investigations against crypto companies, including a probe into Robinhood’s crypto arm.

In May, Robinhood made inroads into Canada when it acquired the Toronto-based WonderFi for nearly $180 million. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year. And, in June, the publicly traded company based in Menlo Park, California, closed its $200 million acquisition of the crypto exchange Bitstamp after a year of regulatory review.

As part of Monday’s announcement, Robinhood also said it was letting its European users trade crypto perpetual futures, a type of crypto derivative that lets traders bet on the future price of a cryptocurrency.

And the online trading app said it will let U.S. customers stake cryptocurrencies—when crypto holders put their digital assets in escrow to support the security of a blockchain. Users will first be able to stake Ethereum and Solana. Robinhood did not say which other tokens it planned to allow users to stake.