Robinhood Chain volume tops $2 billion as tokenized securities gain traction

Robinhood's push into tokenized securities is broadening its digital-asset business beyond trading, with Chain volume and Stock Tokens forming the growth spine.

Robinhood's tokenization push is gaining traction, with Arcus reporting more than $2 billion in cumulative trading volume on Robinhood Chain as Stock Tokens extend the Nasdaq-listed firm's digital-asset business beyond trading.

"Traditional markets spent decades making sophisticated strategies easier to access through products such as leveraged ETFs, and similar strategies can become native to blockchain infrastructure," Eddie Zhang, chief executive of Arcus, said.

Arcus on Aug. 25 launched pTokens, ERC-20 assets that package managed perpetual futures positions into transferable tokens, with 1x and 3x long and short structures covering Bitcoin, Solana and HYPE. The protocol averaged more than $100 million in daily trading volume across its platform. Robinhood Stock Tokens, issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, provide economic exposure to U.S. shares and ETFs without conferring ownership rights, and Arcus is developing the ability to use eligible Stock Tokens as collateral for leveraged positions.

The expansion lands as the tokenized-securities market accelerates. Tokenized U.S. money market funds reached $8.7 billion as of November 2025, and the tokenized U.S. Treasury market has grown to $16 billion, with BlackRock's BUIDL fund reclaiming the lead at about $2.8 billion in assets. Robinhood's Nasdaq listing ties the crypto tokenization narrative to traditional equity markets, and its traction could pressure rival brokerages to offer on-chain products.

Stock Tokens as Collateral

Arcus is also building the ability to use eligible Stock Tokens as collateral for leveraged positions, connecting tokenized traditional-market exposure with crypto-native derivatives. Rather than treating a Stock Token as an asset that can only be bought and sold, DeFi infrastructure could turn it into productive collateral — an investor could retain economic exposure to an equity while using its collateral value to enter a different market.

That improved capital efficiency carries added risk. If an asset already carrying market risk becomes collateral for a leveraged derivatives position, losses can propagate across layers. Collateral haircuts, oracle design, liquidation mechanisms and liquidity conditions become more important as Stock Tokens, stablecoins, perpetuals and tokenized strategies interconnect.

Institutional RWA Growth

The push mirrors broader institutional interest in tokenized securities. BlackRock's BUIDL fund, launched in March 2024 with BNY Mellon, is the largest tokenized money market fund, and Franklin Templeton's OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund has operated since April 2021. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a longtime skeptic, recently revised his view, saying countries and companies should explore the RWA trend as demand grows for tokenized Treasuries and stock tokens such as bStocks.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has cautioned that tokenized securities remain securities subject to federal law, a reminder that the technical permissionlessness of an ERC-20 token does not override securities, derivatives or consumer-protection rules. Stock Tokens are not registered under U.S. securities laws and cannot be offered to U.S. persons, with restrictions also applying in the United Kingdom, Canada and other markets.

For Robinhood, the question is whether Chain volume and Stock Token traction translate into sustained demand rather than launch novelty. DeFi integrations — pTokens appearing in lending markets, automated market makers or portfolio vaults — will be the signal that tokenized positions have become a durable primitive. The next stage will be determined by adoption, liquidity and how regulators classify onchain representations of managed derivatives strategies.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.