Robinhood Expands Into TradFi Perpetuals and AI Trading While Building Its Own Blockchain
US banks are pressing lawmakers for last-minute changes to a landmark crypto bill just days before a Senate vote. Meanwhile, Robinhood has just gone live with a product expansion that pulls traditional finance squarely into the crosshairs of a platform best known for mobile stock trading. The company is now letting eligible European users trade perpetual futures tied to commodities, ETFs, and currencies, according to the original report.
The rollout is not a cautious toe-dip. Gold, silver, crude oil, and the euro-dollar exchange rate are available with up to 10x leverage. It is the kind of leverage traditionally offered by dedicated derivatives exchanges, not by an app that started with zero-commission equities. The move marks a clear bet that Robinhood’s European user base will treat commodity perps as just another tile on the home screen.
Beyond Crypto: Commodities Perps Arrive in Europe
Perpetual futures are a crypto-native instrument that never expires, allowing traders to hold positions indefinitely while paying a funding rate. By bringing that structure to traditional assets, Robinhood is betting on two things: first, that the format appeals to a generation of traders who learned on crypto perps, and second, that European regulators will accept the product without the kind of pushback that has stalled crypto derivatives in the US. The firm already offers crypto perps in Europe through a Lithuanian entity, so adding oil and gold is more of a logical extension than a leap.
What makes the launch notable is the leverage. Ten times on WTI crude is not something a retail broker offers without a clear risk framework. It signals that Robinhood views its European user base as sufficiently experienced, or that it has built enough back-office infrastructure to manage liquidation risk at that multiple. Either way, it raises the bar for competitors like eToro and Revolut, which have been slower to bring derivative firepower to the same market.
A Blockchain and AI Bet
The perps launch was only one part of a much larger product reveal. Robinhood also unveiled a decentralized lending offering, AI-powered trading accounts for US crypto users, and its own blockchain. The lending product is particularly interesting because it lets users lend USDG stablecoins through self-custody wallets, with an estimated annual yield of 7%. That is a direct yield competitor to DeFi protocols and centralized earn products, but with the branding and distribution muscle of a publicly traded company.
On the AI front, the company is not just adding screeners or alerts. It plans to introduce AI agents capable of executing digital asset trades, a step that moves beyond simple automation into delegated execution. The timing aligns with a wave of AI-driven Web3 infrastructure, though Robinhood’s version looks firmly retail-facing and tightly integrated into a custodial or semi-custodial stack. Launching its own blockchain suggests the company wants to control the settlement layer for at least some of these products, rather than relying on third‑party chains with their own fee dynamics and congestion risks.
Regulatory Push and Market Positioning
The company also disclosed that its Singapore entity has received a capital markets services license to offer brokerage services, and that it will launch crypto services in the UK soon. These are not expansions made in a vacuum. US lawmakers remain locked in a fight over the biggest crypto bill in US history, with banks trying to strip out provisions they only recently accepted. For Robinhood, building out regulated footholds in Europe and Asia is a hedge against that uncertainty, and it also gives the company a laboratory to test products that might eventually land in the US if the rules shift.
In the US, the product roadmap is more constrained by design. Robinhood launched Crypto Earn, the USDG lending product, and revised its fee structure for professional crypto traders, but it stopped short of introducing the kind of leveraged tokenized equity trading that has started to appear in on-chain markets. Tokenized US stocks are an area where Robinhood could offer something unique, and the company is expanding access to that product globally. The broader tokenization trend is accelerating: traditional finance giants are settling Treasuries on-chain, and the total value of real‑world assets on public blockchains recently passed $20 billion, as covered in a recent market roundup.
What remains unclear is whether Robinhood can execute on product, regulation, and liquidity across three continents simultaneously. Building a proprietary blockchain, launching AI trading agents, managing perps risk on commodities, and onboarding UK users all in the same roadmap is ambitious even for a company with Robinhood’s balance sheet. For now, the market appears to be watching execution more than positioning. The tokenized stock access and the stablecoin yield product will be the clearest signals of whether the strategy is working.
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