SEC's innovation exemption poses constraint on bringing stock tokens to US, Robinhood crypto chief says

Robinhood's (HOOD) stock-token volume is already high enough to run into caps set out in the Securities and Exchange Commission's innovation exemption for tokenized U.S. equities, the company's crypto chief said.

Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood's senior vice president and general manager of crypto and international, said in an interview with The Block at Korea Blockchain Week 2026 that Robinhood is still working through the SEC order, which he described as a long document that set limits on volume and on which assets can be tokenized.

"We're still trying to understand all the parameters of it," Kerbrat said. "There are limitations on the volume, and what type of assets we can tokenize. If you look at our volume on our stock tokens, it's already pretty high and will hit some of its limits."

On Sept. 17, the SEC issued a five-year exemption that allowed certain U.S. venues to trade tokenized versions of listed stocks without registering as exchanges, subject to caps on symbols and volume and a requirement that the tokens carry the same rights as the underlying shares. 

"Overall, I think what is really important from this signal with the exemption is that the SEC wants to work toward tokenization and understand the advantage of it," Kerbrat said. "So we're really continuing to push toward more adoption of stock tokens and also a broader coverage of U.S. stocks and ETFs."

Stock tokens

Robinhood’s Stock Tokens, issued as debt securities by a Jersey-based entity, are available in more than 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet, but are not offered to U.S. users. The SEC order covers tokenized National Market System stocks that carry the same rights as the underlying shares, and it requires venues to notify issuers, who can object.

Kerbrat and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev both said earlier this month that they will bring in-kind redemption and voting rights to stock tokens. Kerbrat told The Block that these were planned before a public dispute with AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron, and that in-kind redemption was discussed at a July 1 event in London.

"Some of the criticism from the AMC CEO, if you look at it, it's mostly a marketing stunt," he said. "We stand behind the legal structure of our systems." The AMC chief executive had criticized Robinhood's stock tokens last month as illegal offerings and said the company had not consented to them.

US perp futures

Meanwhile, Robinhood is bringing crypto perpetual futures (perps) onshore, as announced on Sept. 29. It plans to enable perps trading in the U.S. for eight cryptocurrencies — BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, ADA, LINK, and HYPE.

"The way it works is that you have this waterfall clearing system that is global, that some of the venues that are launching, for example with Kalshi, did not really support. That's really the main aspect," Kerbrat said, adding that it also recalculates funding rates constantly on the exchange, whereas competing platforms recalculate them every 15 minutes.

The 10x leverage on bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) and 3x on six other tokens was Robinhood's own choice, Kerbrat explained. Raising the leverage limits in the U.S. is "TBD," he added, depending on how users trade and how liquidity develops.

Kerbrat declined to outline a 2027 U.S. derivatives list, but mentioned that in Europe, commodity and ETF perpetuals have drawn interest. He said Robinhood has no single-stock perpetual plans to announce, and pointed to the firm's options business as the place where customers already build multi-leg strategies.