Morgan Stanley says Robinhood quietly built something bigger ahead of its September Summit

Think about what investing in international stocks meant for an ordinary investor not so long ago. 

You needed a brokerage account with international access, dealt with currency conversion fees, navigated tax complications and, in many cases, couldn’t buy the companies you wanted. The financial system was built for insiders.

That is the problem Robinhood built its entire identity around solving. And now, according to a Morgan Stanley research note shared with me at TheStreet, it is doing it again. And this time for global investors who want access to U.S. equities without a U.S. brokerage account.

Robinhood (HOOD) has launched Stock Tokens. These are tokenized debt securities tracking U.S. equities and are available to investors in more than 120 countries. 

Within months, the product accumulated more than $150 million in assets, approximately 200,000 holders, and roughly $400 million in daily decentralized exchange volume, according to the Morgan Stanley note. 

A person in Brazil or Nigeria can now hold a derivative position tracking Apple or Nvidia stock through a blockchain wallet.

Also Read: Robinhood Markets Inc. Latest News and Stories

What Robinhood has actually built and why Morgan Stanley calls it a “right to win”

Looking at the note, I see Morgan Stanley framing Robinhood’s onchain evolution around one structural advantage: 28 million funded customers who already trust the platform with real money.

Building a blockchain product from scratch requires trust, which, of course, takes years. Robinhood is starting with a customer base that has already crossed that threshold. 

The firm sees this as the foundation for what Morgan Stanley calls a “right to win” in tokenized finance.

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The product stack that the note describes is actually more comprehensive than most investors realize. Robinhood Chain is a Layer-2 blockchain built on Ethereum, dedicated to financial services and real-world assets.

Robinhood Earn integrates decentralized lending directly into the main app via protocols such as Morpho. Robinhood Wallet provides self-custody and decentralized exchange routing. Bitstamp, the $200 million institutional crypto exchange Robinhood acquired, provides the infrastructure for global crypto trading across all U.S. states and international markets.

Robinhood Chain has already scaled to more than $1.5 billion in total value locked, with Earn balances approaching $450 million, according to Morgan Stanley’s note. 

Robinhood’s regulatory picture that shapes what comes next

The U.S. Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act on Sep. 15, falling short of the 60 votes needed in a 49-to-50 procedural vote, with negotiations stalling over ethics provisions tied to President Trump’s crypto businesses, according to CNBC.

That outcome matters, but Morgan Stanley’s note suggests it is not the decisive factor for Robinhood’s timeline. 

The SEC subsequently introduced a digital asset “innovation exemption” that would allow eligible platforms to trade tokenized U.S. stocks without registering as national securities exchanges. 

The CFTC issued a no-action position for passive software providers and sent the crypto market rulemaking proposal to the White House. The OCC is advancing stablecoin rulemaking with completion targeted for November.

The regulatory environment is messy and incomplete, but it is moving toward recognizing tokenized finance as a legitimate category rather than treating it as an extension of speculative crypto trading.

That distinction actually matters enormously for Robinhood. The company’s Q2 2026 earnings showed traditional cryptocurrency transaction revenue falling 38% year over year (YOY) to $100 million, according to the earnings release.  The growth is in the infrastructure and financial products built on top of blockchain rails.

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The Robinhood catalysts Morgan Stanley is watching

The note identifies several near-term events that could move the story forward. The Robinhood Summit on September 29 and 30 could bring product announcements, including potential U.S. perpetual futures trading. This is a product category currently available internationally but not yet in the domestic market. 

Expanded real-world asset offerings and deeper lending and collateral use cases for Stock Tokens are the other near-term priorities.

The Q2 2026 earnings, reported July 29, already showed a business generating record revenue of $1.31 billion, up 32% year over year, with 13 separate business lines each above $100 million in annualized revenue. Net deposits were a record $22 billion. Gold subscribers hit a record 4.8 million, or 39% YOY.

Morgan Stanley’s onchain thesis is really the latest chapter of that mission: expanding financial access to people and markets that the traditional system was never built to serve. 

The bigger question is whether Robinhood’s 28 million customers, along with the millions of global investors now gaining access through Stock Tokens, can turn that mission into a meaningful new growth engine.

Currently, HOOD trades near $119.40, up 5.57% year-to-date, and $1,133.47% according to Yahoo Finance. Based on TheStreet’s 21 analysts’ stock ratings for Robinhood in the past 3 months, 19 gave a buy, 2 a hold, and 0 a sell.

About the author

Mwangi Enos

Markets, stocks writer

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Enos is a Financial Markets Reporter at TheStreet and at Coinpaper, where he covers stocks, investing, and daily developments across U.S. markets and major global indexes. With more than six years of experience in trading and financial journalism, his work focuses on market trends, corporate developments, and investor sentiment, helping readers understand what is moving markets and why.