Robinhood executive Johann Kerbrat said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent innovation exemption for tokenized stocks may still leave the company facing a hard limit if it tries to bring the product into the U.S. market.
Speaking at Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul, Kerbrat said the SEC’s volume cap is high, but it may already be close enough to Robinhood’s current offshore trading activity to become a real constraint. In comments to The Block, he said the company is still reviewing the 「very long document」, which lays out what assets can be tokenized and where trading limits apply. Robinhood’s offshore tokenized stock volumes are already 「quite high,」 he said, and could run into those thresholds.
Volume limits may become the first obstacle
The SEC issued the five-year exemptive order on Sept. 17. It allows compliant U.S. venues to trade tokenized U.S. equities without registering as exchanges. The conditions are strict. The tokens must carry the same rights as the underlying shares, including voting rights. Trading venues must notify listed companies, and those companies retain the right to object.
The framework had been seen as a major step toward linking crypto rails with traditional finance. Kerbrat’s remarks point to a more immediate operational issue: the cap on trading volume.
Robinhood’s offshore structure does not match the SEC model
Robinhood’s current tokenized equity product, Stock Tokens, is issued in bond form by a Jersey entity. It is available through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries worldwide, but not to U.S. users. The tokens track U.S. stock prices, yet they do not provide voting rights or physical redemption.
That is materially different from the SEC exemption, which requires tokenized shares to match the rights attached to the original stock. Earlier this month, Kerbrat and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev both said the company plans to add in-kind redemption and voting rights to its tokenized stock product.
Kerbrat said those features were already in the works before his public dispute with AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron. He added that in-kind redemption had already been discussed at an event in London on July 1 this year.
Kerbrat pushes back on AMC criticism
Last month, Adam Aron criticized Robinhood’s tokenized stock product as an illegal issuance and said AMC had never agreed to it. Kerbrat rejected that argument, saying, 「If you look closely at the AMC CEO’s criticism, that mostly is a marketing stunt. We are very confident in our legal structure.」
Questions remain over real-world adoption
The SEC’s innovation exemption is intended to draw institutional capital into tokenized U.S. equities under a compliant framework. Kerbrat’s comments suggest the first real barrier may be less about legal access and more about how much activity the rules will actually allow. If Robinhood, already one of the largest platforms by tokenized stock volume, could be constrained by the cap, smaller entrants may face an even narrower path.
TD Cowen and other analysts had already taken a negative view on near-term adoption after the SEC unveiled the exemption. Their argument was that U.S. investors already have established ways to trade stocks, while issuers have little incentive to let their shares trade onchain around the clock. By contrast, crypto perpetual futures may remain the more practical product for active traders. Robinhood has also been positioning itself in that market through the rollout of perps.