Johann Kerbrat, a seasoned engineer at Robinhood, spearheads pivotal foundational teams. With his deep research and engineering skills in programming languages and systems, Johann possesses the knowledge and experience that your audience would greatly benefit from.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Hanker brat general manager of crypto at Robin Hood. Let's get you right in the middle. Let's talk about what's going on last night
00:08 I was even looking at the crypto action, you know one part of that crypto right never sleeps
00:13 So either it could be a positive for you or a negative depending on how you deal with it
00:18 But it's good to see you today. Let's talk. Let's get right into the action
00:22 Of course
00:23 the first thing I'd want to start off is so everybody can understand what you guys have is
00:28 What are the range of cryptocurrency coins that are available on Robin Hood platform and the chat wanted to know even before you came on?
00:36 When will Solana be on?
00:38 So there you guys have it. We'll get right to the question. How we doing today, Johan pretty good
00:45 How are you doing Mitch Dennis? Good to see you
00:47 Great. Let's get to the action
00:50 So everyone wants to hear about the cryptocurrency coins
00:53 And of course you you heard that comment that chat wants to know about Solana, of course
00:58 Yeah, so, you know, we we provide a pretty wide range of cryptocurrency. We have 15 on the platform including one stable coin
01:05 We have a pretty long process to list
01:08 Cryptocurrencies so it takes into account, you know what customer want, but we also have a very
01:14 dedicated process around technology security compliance legal and all these things so
01:19 I can't tell you when a cryptocurrency will be live or not
01:22 But what I can tell you is we already have 15 on the platform
01:26 And you know, we're excited to keep expanding
01:28 As a quick follow-up
01:31 I did see on your recent post on Twitter that you guys just opened up offering in Nevada and that crypto is now available in
01:38 49 states, but I'm like what's this 50th state? Which one are we missing here?
01:44 Yeah, we are not available in the why
01:46 So Oh Hawaii, you know, why why guys they don't head not into it yet
01:53 But I was really excited to open to Nevada. I took us a long time and you know now we are available in 49 states
01:59 So that's very exciting for us
02:01 That's awesome. Let's talk about some key features. Of course Robin Hood wallet and how it enhances the users experience for traders
02:08 Yeah, so, you know, I think for for us at Robin Hood
02:11 what we want is to really give what customer are asking for and you know, there's a lot of feature and crypto and web 3 that
02:19 Are just way too broad for us to all support within Robin Hood the main app
02:24 And so we wanted to give two customers a choice and they can decide for example to self custody on Robin Hood
02:31 There are sets of self custody on the Robin Hood wallet and then they have the control of their key
02:37 And you know Robin Hood cannot access anything on their wallet
02:42 And with this one they can also access to everything that web 3 has to offer
02:46 So there is a dap browser where you can connect to any dap
02:49 And I think what we've made very different on this wallet is we made so plain simple for you to put an account on the wallet
02:58 Control your key and get access to all this web 3 features that you know
03:03 We we are really trying to remove all the barrier to entry into the web 3 space
03:07 Love that
03:09 and of course
03:10 The key features are really something that we're all looking for right because we need to kind of get through the uncertainty in the space
03:16 But I love the expansion into the European Union. So you guys are just introducing out there
03:23 How do you anticipate this expansion will attract a broader customer base and contribute of course to increase revenues?
03:29 Yeah, so, you know the cat is out of the bag
03:32 Also, you announced it during the earnings this week that we were going to expand in the EU
03:38 And it's it's a really exciting
03:40 Project for us and as you can hear from my accent, I'm European as well. So, you know for me, it's also
03:46 personally exciting
03:48 you know for for us the goal of
03:50 Crypto has always been to make it accessible to a broader audience
03:55 We think that crypto is going to be the financial framework of tomorrow and more and more
04:00 Companies are going to run on top of blockchain technologies
04:04 And so we we really want to remove this barrier to entry and I think currently like we keep saying that but we are not seeing
04:11 It from from some of our competitors. They keep increasing
04:14 fees or prices to the customers and so we want to disrupt that and so we are going to go to to the EU by
04:22 You know and
04:25 and basically bring the same kind of feature that we brought in the US to the European market and we're going to try to
04:32 Disrupt prices and we're going to make it as simple as possible to get access to crypto and use it in your day-to-day
04:39 Awesome now, of course, I caught this interesting study and I think it's important to kind of know competitive advantages
04:47 So a recent study by radius insights affirmed that Robin Hood boasts is the lowest average cost for crypto trading
04:54 Can you elaborate on this and how is exactly a competitive advantage for everyone out there?
05:00 Yeah, so I think what's important to understand is, you know, we've had this advantage for a very long time
05:06 We just didn't really talk about it
05:08 But when we were talking to customer, it's something that I love to engage with customer understanding. What are their pain points?
05:16 You know
05:16 What what are they having trouble with?
05:18 we realize that people have a lot of trouble to compare pricing between the different platform and
05:24 When you think about it, it's it's actually
05:27 Very obvious because you have some companies like Robin Hood's
05:31 Make revenue on with rebates. There are some companies that
05:35 fees some companies are fees plus a markup on the spread and
05:39 So it's very very complicated to to compare what you're actually paying and what we are doing with these studies
05:46 We are showing that at the end of the day when you place an order on Robin Hood you get more crypto
05:51 For the dollars that you spend on the platform versus the competition and for me
05:57 that was really important because we have this great advantage and
06:00 It's also helping our biggest customer base. We don't have a different rebate depending on the order size
06:08 So if you're doing a dollar cost average or if you're doing a very small order of a few bucks
06:12 You will get you know, the most crypto for your box compared to other platform where?
06:18 If you're using the dollar cost average or if you're doing a small order
06:21 You're gonna pay a higher fee than if you're spending more money and for us at Robin Hood
06:26 You know the mission was to democratize finance for all and I think it's really really important because for all it means everybody
06:32 Not, you know people with with more money than the other
06:36 Johan I just got a question about your latest earnings report and in that report
06:41 Cryptocurrency revenues did decline 23 to 23 million dollars
06:48 Why do you think
06:49 Cryptocurrency revenues are declining is this just the environment that we're in right now where retail maybe you know has been hitting the stock
06:56 Market, maybe they're just turned off on anything. Do you see that rebounding you see like the interest waning? What why is that?
07:03 Yeah, you know
07:05 I think at the end of the day what I'm trying to focus on is is on the long term if you actually
07:10 Look at Robin crypto. We launched at the top of the winter in 2018
07:15 so, you know at the time that was kind of a similar situation where there was a lot less interest into crypto and
07:22 What we decided at the time was like let's focus on the long term
07:27 The crypto is very cyclical and when people are coming back or when there is more interest into the market
07:33 We want to be ready and we want to have the feature that that people are asking for and so that's that's what I'm doing
07:38 right now
07:40 To to answer the question a bit more
07:43 Precisely I think you know despite the downturn in the market
07:47 We still manage to maintain a very strong hold on customer assets in term of custody
07:51 And we also gain market share on the on the pair that we support and that for me is really what you know
07:58 I'm looking for is I want to make sure that for the for the feature that we have we were actually winning
08:03 in the in the market
08:05 And you know when when crypto come back we want to be ready for that. Yeah, I love it
08:11 I like I always view it in a lot of people in the web 3 space for you it this is the time to build
08:15 right and be ready for that infrastructure so that you can get on that next bull wave and
08:21 At least the price action that I've been seeing in cryptocurrency. It hasn't been hurting it for sure as of late. It's been a week
08:26 Yeah, yeah, I'm sure and it wakes up investors out there that the opportunities are right there available in front of you
08:34 So, of course we had in light of this recent FTX scandal
08:39 Investors uncertainty right has definitely kind of increased and that's understandable right as there was some bad players in this space
08:47 But how does Robin Hood plan to fulfill its mission for building the safest and most trusted crypto platform?
08:54 For everyone out there to be able to use
08:56 Yeah, you know, I think it's it's it's really
08:59 kind of sad and funny at the same time because I probably know we believed in a lot of concept that
09:06 We thought were obvious and we thought that every company out there were actually doing so, you know
09:11 Not coming link phones making sure that not one person has access to the wallets all these kind of things
09:17 You know
09:17 We thought that was kind of the thing of the past of the mongogs of you know
09:21 10 years ago not not something we will hear about in 2022 or 2023 and
09:26 You know, I think the the outcome of the trial
09:29 I'm happy that it's behind us and that now we can focus as an industry on
09:33 building for the future and you know kind of
09:36 erasing like these stories of the past but
09:40 For us, you know, what's very important to know for for customers and all these narrows is
09:46 We are a public company. We are doing regular audits on a finance on our custodies
09:52 And so, you know this kind of thing that we we heard during the FTX time is is not possible at Robin Hood
10:00 and you know
10:01 I think also what we we've seen during that time in November of 2022 and also like more recently when there was
10:08 Also some scandal with other platform
10:10 We saw a flight of safety to from our customers like we we saw large influx of customers coming into
10:16 Robin Hood and depositing their crypto on Robin Hood and for me that was a great thing as well
10:22 It was showing that you know what we are building
10:24 We are maybe a bit slower than the competition
10:27 We may not have all the feature of the competition, but we are a safe place for you to to buy and sell and all crypto
10:33 Well, you guys heard some of the highlights here. Of course the lowest average cost of crypto trading
10:39 I definitely tell you guys to check out that study so that you guys can see the competitive advantages there
10:44 Johan Kerr-Bratt general manager of crypto at Robin Hood
10:47 I'm also throw up his Twitter in the chat there so you guys can keep up with everything that he's doing
10:52 It's always good to have you and I love the transparency. Of course. That's what I think we need more in this space
10:57 It's just transparency so that investors can have that certainty
11:01 Especially things like audits things like that being a public company and being public facing is definitely gonna help you guys
11:07 Appreciate you coming on today and we'll always have a nice time. Thanks
11:11 Have a good one
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11:49 (upbeat music)