Brokerage firm Robinhood (HOOD) unveiled its own blockchain on 1 Jul alongside a suite of new crypto and financial products, marking its biggest crypto move to date.
Robinhood Broadens Crypto Push with Blockchain Network, AI Trading; Shares Rise
1 July 2026 - 22:34 CEST
By Matt Neill
The company used a live event in Greenwich, London, to announce the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, its Ethereum Layer 2 network built on Arbitrum, roughly four months after opening a public testnet in February. The network is designed for tokenized assets and decentralized finance applications.
Other announcements from the event included crypto trading powered by AI and stock tokens. The announcements highlight Robinhood's attempt to turn itself into a broader financial platform built around crypto, prediction markets, tokenized stocks, AI tools and consumer finance.
The move sent the company's shares more than 7% higher intraday as investors welcomed the broader push into digital finance. HOOD was trading at $107.71 at 18:34UTC, up 7.4% on the day but still down about 5% year-to-date.
AI agents enter trading
Robinhood is also adding crypto to agentic trading to its platform, meaning customers will be able to authorize AI agents to place crypto trades through their accounts.
The announcement follows a string of similar launches across the crypto industry. On 30 Jun, OKX unveiled a marketplace where AI agents can transact and pay one another autonomously, while Coinbase earlier in June introduced tools allowing customers to connect AI agents to their accounts to execute trades and payments.
The launches reflect a growing industry view that AI agents could become active participants in digital asset markets rather than simply analytical tools.
Robinhood Wallet now supports perpetual futures and stock tokens alongside other crypto products. The stock tokens track more than 90 US-listed companies and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including Nvidia, Alphabet and Apple, and are designed to move through Robinhood Chain.
Gas fees on the new chain will be covered for the next 90 days, including swaps, bridge transactions and perpetual futures.
The products are unavailable in the US, UK, Canada, Switzerland, the UAE and certain other jurisdictions, the company said.
Betting on growth
The event follows a difficult several months for Robinhood. In June, the company said it would cut about 10% of its workforce to flatten its structure and create a more focused team after reporting first-quarter earnings that missed analysts' estimates earlier in the year.
Crypto was a weak spot in those results, with first-quarter crypto revenue falling 47% year-over-year to $134mn and crypto trading volumes on the app dropping 48% to $24bn.
The Greenwich event was designed to shift attention back to growth. Robinhood is positioning AI agents as a new interface for retail finance, while pushing crypto further into trading, payments, wallets and tokenized assets.
