Robinhood’s Stock Tokens Face Scrutiny from OpenAI, Blockchain Researchers – Crypto News

At its “To Catch a Token” event in Cannes earlier this week, United States brokerage giant Robinhood introduced 200 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, as well as perpetual futures, for eligible European customers, with plans to expand the list of stock tokens to 2,000 firms by the end of the year.

The Menlo Park-headquartered broker also specifically mentioned that it will offer qualifying EU users tokenized private shares, starting with tokens representing private shares of OpenAI and SpaceX.

However, two days after the announcement was made, OpenAI took to X to distance itself from Robinhood’s initiative, stating: “These ‘OpenAI tokens’ are not OpenAI equity.” The X post from OpenAI’s official account continues:

Following OpenAI’s official response, Robinhood’s co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev responded on X, confirming that the private company stock tokens “aren’t technically” equities.

“At our recent crypto event, we announced a limited Stock Token giveaway on OpenAI and SpaceX to eligible European customers. While it is true that they aren’t technically ‘equity’ (you can see the precise dynamics in our Terms for those interested), the tokens effectively give retail investors exposure to these private assets,” Tenev clarified.

Robinhood’s CEO further added that since the announcement, the trading platform has heard “from many private companies that are eager to join us in the tokenization revolution.”

As of press time, SpaceX has not publicly commented on Robinhood’s latest initiative to tokenize the firm’s private shares.

Walled Garden Concerns

Aside from OpenAI’s statement against Robinhood’s new private stock tokens, others have expressed concerns that the firm’s tokenized stock offerings in general appear to be stuck inside a closed-off system.

In a recent X post, Electric Capital partner and former quantitative researcher, Ren, suggested that the stock tokens are built in a way that resembles a “walled garden,” where only approved wallets can move them around.

In the post, Ren noted that Robinhood’s tokenized stock contracts check “every transfer” against a “registry of approved wallets,” suggesting that only whitelisted users can move the assets. If accurate, this setup would likely block any use of the tokens in broader DeFi applications.

“It’s unlikely these tokens can interact with defi,” Ren wrote, adding further that it’s “very possible cefi with distribution just outcompetes existing defi protocols.”

However, not everyone agrees with that assessment. A blockchain engineer at Offchain Labs, known as @gzeon on X, suggested in replies that the contracts may not include a whitelist at all.

Based on their testing, transfers between any wallets still work in a forked environment, which points to a setup that may rely more on blacklisting than whitelisting.

The Defiant reached out to Robinhood for clarification about the contract structure and whether the tokens are intended to remain within a closed ecosystem but did not get a response by publication time.

Robinhood Chain

Robinhood’s tokenized stocks are currently deployed on Arbitrum, a Layer 2 (L2) network built on Ethereum, and appear to follow a version of the ERC-20 standard, with compliance restrictions. Ren said that they decompiled the contracts using open-source tools and reviewed their logic, including access control mechanisms and transfer rules.

Eventually, Robinhood plans to move the tokenized stocks to Robinhood Chain, its own Arbitrum-based L2, which the firm also announced in Cannes this week and says will launch in 2026.

The U.S. brokerage giant also said that tokenized tokens — which Tenev called a “trading revolution” — will be eligible for dividend payouts and will be tradable around the clock on weekdays.

In an exclusive interview with The Defiant, Robinhood Crypto’s general manager, Johann Kerbrat, revealed that the company is also waiting for regulatory approval to roll out tokenized stocks and perpetuals in the U.S.

The long-term plan, according to Kerbrat, is to build a permissionless blockchain that supports self-custody and potentially more integrations with decentralized tools. Robinhood has also said that it plans to let users move their tokenized stocks to self-custodial wallets, like MetaMask and Rabby, though it hasn’t shared a timeline for when that might happen.

Robinhood shares, which trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker HOOD, are down 3.7% today, partially retracing gains of nearly 12% this week.