Robinhood plans to launch tokenized stock trading in US by 2027

Robinhood has spent the last year building the infrastructure to let people trade stocks on a blockchain. Now, with a fresh SEC exemption in hand, the company is positioning to bring that product to the one market it’s been locked out of: the United States.

The brokerage launched its Robinhood Chain mainnet on July 1, 2026, rolling out tokenized stock trading to users in more than 120 countries. The US wasn’t one of them. But a September 17 decision by the SEC, granting a conditional “Innovation Exemption” for tokenized National Market System stocks on blockchain platforms, has opened a door that Robinhood appears ready to walk through.

What Robinhood has built so far

The company’s tokenized equity push started modestly. In June 2025, Robinhood debuted its first-generation Classic Stock Tokens for users in the EU and European Economic Area, covering roughly 200 equities and ETFs.

Those tokens are structured as tokenized debt securities, issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited. That’s a legally important distinction: holders don’t get direct ownership of the underlying shares, and they don’t get voting rights.

When the Robinhood Chain mainnet went live this past July, it extended access beyond Europe to a global user base. The chain itself is an Ethereum-compatible Layer 2 blockchain, meaning it inherits Ethereum’s security model while processing transactions more cheaply and quickly.

By early September 2026, Robinhood Stock Tokens accounted for approximately 60% of tokenized equity transfer volume, a striking figure given that the company holds a much smaller share of total market capitalization in the tokenized equity space.

The 24/7 trading capability is a significant draw. Traditional US stock markets operate roughly 6.5 hours per day, five days a week. Robinhood’s tokenized versions trade around the clock, and they’re composable with decentralized finance protocols, meaning users can potentially lend, borrow against, or provide liquidity with their tokenized stock positions.

The SEC opens a narrow path

The reason US users have been excluded is straightforward: domestic securities regulations haven’t had a framework for blockchain-based stock trading. The SEC’s September 17 decision changes that calculus, though not without conditions.

The five-year conditional exemption allows qualified venues to facilitate trading of tokenized NMS stocks on blockchain platforms. The conditions are meaningful. Platforms must preserve shareholder rights and obtain issuer consent, two requirements that would push Robinhood’s current debt-security model toward something closer to actual equity ownership.

That’s a higher bar than what Robinhood currently offers internationally. The Jersey-issued tokens don’t carry voting rights or direct ownership. To comply with the SEC’s conditions, Robinhood would likely need to restructure how its tokens work for the US market, either by partnering with issuers directly or creating a new token standard that wraps real equity ownership into an onchain instrument.

CEO Vlad Tenev has been publicly advocating for exactly this kind of regulatory clarity. He’s argued that tokenized stocks offer real-time settlement and reduce dependence on legacy market infrastructure, the kind of plumbing that still relies on a T+1 settlement cycle (down from T+2 only recently) and a chain of intermediaries including clearinghouses, transfer agents, and custodians.

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