From Broker to Blockchain: HOOD's Role in Building a DeFi Ecosystem

Robinhood Markets HOOD is leading a transformative shift toward a permissionless financial future with its ambitious three-phase tokenization plan. A.J. Warner, chief strategy officer at Offchain Labs, disclosed this in an interview with CoinDesk on the sidelines of Devconnect in Buenos Aires.

HOOD’s end goal is to make tokenized assets fully permissionless, withdrawable from Robinhood’s platform and interoperable across decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and applications. This vision promises to revolutionize not only the company’s revenue model but also the broader financial ecosystem.

The first phase, already underway in Europe, introduced tokenized stocks on a blockchain foundation, with users able to trade nearly 800 publicly listed securities. In phase two, Robinhood intends to leverage its Bitstamp acquisition to enable 24/7 trading of tokenized stocks, breaking free from legacy market hours. The final phase is the most disruptive, with assets becoming truly permissionless. This will allow retail clients to withdraw and use them as collateral or trading assets in external DeFi apps.

Robinhood’s roadmap fundamentally dismantles traditional financial gatekeeping. Tokenized, permissionless equities will evolve into programmable, always-on assets, enabling fractional ownership, instant settlement and global access. This broadens the addressable market, deepens engagement and creates new fee and yield streams, from token transfers, yield-generating DeFi integrations to global retail investor participation. By embedding programmability and portability into asset ownership, the company positions itself as both a disruptor in finance and a beneficiary of new, blockchain-native revenue channels.

As the company executes this vision, it may spark a domino effect across brokerages and asset managers, accelerating the rise of a decentralized, permissionless financial economy. The future of finance is programmable and borderless, with Robinhood setting the pace.

What HOOD’s Peers are Doing to Expand Product Suits

Two of Robinhood’s closest peers are Interactive Brokers IBKR and Charles Schwab SCHW. 

Interactive Brokers is expanding its product suite aggressively. It has added daily options on European indices and broadened crypto trading capabilities, including stablecoin funding and staking. Interactive Brokers also launched "Connections," a proprietary feature integrating global markets to provide clients access to stocks, options, futures, currencies and bonds across more than 160 markets worldwide. 

Meanwhile, Schwab has launched the Schwab Alternative Investments Select platform, offering retail clients with more than $5 million in assets access to a curated selection of private equity, hedge funds, private credit and real estate investment funds. Schwab continues enhancing wealth management with tailored advisory services, expanding access to alternative investments for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth investors.

Robinhood’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimate Analysis

This year, shares of HOOD have soared a whopping 185.1%, massively outperforming the industry rally of 27.1%.

Given the impressive price performance, HOOD shares are currently trading at a massive premium to the industry. The company has a 12-month trailing price-to-tangible book (P/TB) of 12.17X compared with the industry average of 2.91X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Robinhood’s 2025 and 2026 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 78.9% and 16.2%, respectively. In the past week, earnings estimates for 2025 and 2026 have been revised upward to $1.95 and $2.27, respectively.

HOOD currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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