Robinhood is moving toward around-the-clock trading of tokenized stocks, with CEO Vlad Tenev repeatedly linking the strategy to the 2021 GameStop saga. The event exposed how multi-day settlement cycles forced brokerages to post large collateral deposits during volatility spikes, leading Robinhood to restrict buys and triggering backlash from users and regulators.
“Combine slow, outdated financial infrastructure with unprecedented trading volume and volatility in a small number of stocks, and you get massive deposit requirements, trading restrictions, and millions of unhappy customers,” Tenev wrote on X. U.S. equity settlement has since shifted from T+2 to T+1, but he argues that weekends and holidays still leave gaps, especially when global markets remain active.
How Tokenization Reshapes Settlement
By representing equities as onchain tokens, trades can settle near-instantly, cutting the collateral buffers that traditional clearing systems demand. Tenev says this reduces the risk of forced trading limits during market stress. Tokenized stocks also bring features not native to legacy infrastructure: continuous trading, fractional ownership, and programmable transfers. Ownership can move directly between users without batch settlement.
In June 2025, Robinhood launched its first tokenized stock products for European customers, covering more than 2,000 U.S.-listed equities with five-day-a-week trading. The tokens are issued on Arbitrum One and track price movements and dividends without requiring direct holding of the underlying shares.
The next phase, according to Tenev, extends those products to 24/7 trading and opens up decentralized finance use cases. Users will be able to self-custody tokenized shares and use them in onchain lending or other blockchain-based financial activity. Robinhood has said it plans to support these assets on its own Layer 2 network, Robinhood Chain.
Regulatory Clarity Remains the Wildcard
Tenev insists technology is not the bottleneck; the missing piece is legal certainty for tokenized securities in the United States. He has publicly backed the proposed Clarity Act, arguing that legislation is needed to set durable standards. “Legislation would ensure that subsequent commissions cannot abandon or reverse the progress achieved by this SEC,” Tenev said, adding that it could prevent trading restrictions like those in 2021 from ever recurring.
Recent SEC guidance reaffirmed that tokenized securities remain subject to federal securities laws, requiring issuers and platforms to follow existing disclosure, custody, and trading rules even if records move onchain. This means widespread U.S. rollout hinges on lawmaking, not market demand alone.
If Robinhood succeeds, the implications ripple across market structure. Near-instant settlement challenges clearinghouse models built around delayed finality, but it also relieves brokers of heavy collateral burdens during volatile periods. For regulators, 24/7 trading and off-chain ownership records raise new supervision questions. Five years after the GameStop halt, Robinhood is treating tokenization as a fix for a known weakness rather than a speculative add-on. Whether that approach reshapes U.S. equity markets depends on how far regulators are willing to adapt existing frameworks to infrastructure that never closes.