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I hope this newsletter is finding you offline and enjoying the long weekend.

Robinhood caused a kerfuffle this week with news that it is preparing to launch tokenized share trading in the European Union, offering users access to blockchain-based versions of traditional stocks. The 200 initial stocks include shares in private companies like SpaceX and OpenAI. (Though not without some controversy.) As Chuk, writer of The Weekly Stable, notes, "This follows similar moves by Kraken and Bybit, which now offer over 60 tokenized stocks to users across 140+ countries via Backed Finance’s xStocks platform."

But why tokenize stocks? What value does this provide over TradFi stocks (which, themselves, are just company tokens)?

Bloomberg's Matt Levine highlights a few of the advantages:

• “You could have custody of your own stock, rather than keeping it at a brokerage;
• you could probably get a big margin loan from a decentralized finance platform;
• it might be easier to trade 24 hours a day."

A few others come to mind:

• Though Robinhood's launch is focused on Europe, this could also enable stock market access in other geographies with thin brokerages.
• This is a move towards creating global ledgers and stock indices, which blur the distinction between public and private company stocks, and create more consistent global pricing and liquidity (and portability).
• P2P stock transactions.
• The opportunity for other asset classes (real estate, art, corporate debt, disaster bonds, etc.) to be tokenizd in a way that is fungible with equities.

But the devil is in the details.

As Dragonfly's Rob Hadick writes, the most likely structure is that, "you have an SPV out of Jersey that is regulated in Lichtenstein. To mint/redeem you have to be KYC'd with Kraken (and soon other exchanges) and that token gives any holder who KYCs the legal right to redeem for the cash value of their equity token at the OFFCHAIN price."

What this implies is that, while the token trades 24/7, the underlying stock still trades on conventional markets, implying that there may be a delta in the reference price it trades at onchain vs. off-chain. This will lead market-makers to charge a premium for onchain stocks to cover the price difference (effectively a credit spread), which is a great potential revenue stream for Robinhood, which won't be able to charge payment for order flow in the EU beginning in 2026.

One of the issues is that these firms, effectively providing credit for tokenized stock purchases, are then incentivized to pull liquidity in periods of volatility (especially when the market is closed), which creates amplified volatility and liquidity risk. If these tokenized loans are used as collateral for defi lending, over-the-weekend stock volatility could have the cascading effect of wiping out loan portfolios.

Robinhood's specific approach to tokenize private company stocks without the permissions of those companies – effectively selling a derivative – also has some potential redemption risks. And it's unclear whether these tokenized stocks in particular will exist in a walled garden or be truly self-custodied (and therefore eligible to use in DeFi contracts).

And as Matt Levine writes, “These are minor distractions from the real prize. The real prize is that if you utter the magic word “tokenized,” that could let you sell private stock to the general public.”

There are many details still to be worked out, but I think this is an exciting step towards a more liquid, global, real-time, and interoperable market for financial instruments across asset classes.

For a deeper analysis, you should check out Chuk's newsletter from yesterday:

The Weekly Stable (Vol 24)

Robinhood & Kraken Launch Tokenized stocks

This Week in FintechChuk Okpalugo

Programming Note: I'll be off tomorrow, back on Sunday with a combined M&A and VC newsletter.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

(👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm)

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🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Mastercard is applying AI to curb card reissuance fraud via its new “Account Intelligence Reissuance” service.

📰 Other News

Bank of New York Mellon is employing dozens of AI-driven “digital employees” that held official company logins and had direct supervisors. These digital workers autonomously handled tasks such as code vulnerability remediation and payment validation. This mirrors similar AI initiatives at JPMorgan Chase, which already offers AI chatbot support to 230,000 employees . 

A UK tribunal ruled that Visa and Mastercard breached European competition law by imposing excessive multilateral interchange fees on retailers.

💬 Quotes of the Week

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Republic launched “mirror tokens” offering retail investors tokenized equity exposure to private unicorns like SpaceX, Anthropic, and Epic Games.

Cloudflare introduced Pay Per Crawl, a new private‑beta feature that empowered website owners to block AI crawlers by default, or charge them for content access using HTTP 402 responses.

Kraken launched Krak, a global peer‑to‑peer payments app supporting both cryptocurrencies and fiat transactions across 100+ countries.

Hokkoku Financial Holdings partnered with Soft Space to develop a SoftPOS solution capable of processing both NFC card and stablecoin payments on standard Android devices.

Intuit launched proactive AI agents embedded within QuickBooks, automating tasks across payments, accounting, financial analysis, and CRM.

EverC introduced its Instant Onboarding solution, enabling payment providers to onboard merchants in seconds.

Rain partnered with Toku to launch a real-time payroll infrastructure built on stablecoins. This collaboration enabled employers to pay employees instantly via stablecoins, offering faster settlement compared to traditional payroll methods.

Circle announced Circle Gateway, providing crosschain USDC access with no bridging, unified liquidity, instant transfers, and full asset control across chains.

Robinhood also announced its own new blockchain, being built on Arbitrum.

Stable announced a Layer1 optimized for payments using USDT to make fees and settlement times more predictable.

💸 OneDosh: One App. Every Currency.

Tired of juggling bank apps, crypto wallets, and remittance platforms? Meet OneDosh — your all-in-one money app built for today’s global citizen.

• ✅ Multi-currency wallet: USD, NGN, & USDC in one place — swap instantly at live rates
• ✅ Zero-fee U.S.–Nigeria transfers, 24/7, in minutes
• ✅ Virtual & Physical spend card: Spend worldwide, shop globally.
• ✅ USD, European & NGN account numbers: Get paid directly, anywhere.
• ✅ P2P payments: Send/request money instantly — no bank details needed

More corridors coming soon. One Move. One World. OneDosh.

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💼 Job of the Week

Venn Jobs

Venn Jobs

Our friends at Venn in Toronto are growing and hiring: The top priorities are Head of Compliance, Head of Growth, and Head of Sales.

📰 Other News

Wise submitted an application to the OCC, seeking to establish a non‑depository national trust bank in Austin, Texas. The charter will allow Wise to connect directly to Federal Reserve payment systems, bypassing intermediaries.

Circle also formally applied for a national trust bank charter, proposing to establish the First National Digital Currency Bank under OCC regulation.

Peter Thiel is partnering with Palmer Luckey on the launch of Erebor (formerly Atticus), a digital bank for crypto and tech startups.

🤝 Partnership Corner

Wirex launched institutional‑grade stablecoin payment infrastructure on Fireblocks. Through this integration, Fireblocks’ clients could use Wirex Pay Chain to issue stablecoin‑backed Visa debit cards, open stablecoin checking accounts, and support large‑scale treasury operations.

👎 The Bad News

Belgian prosecutors initiated a money‑laundering investigation into Worldline’s Belgian unit.