--- title: 'Robinhood wants to replace your bank' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=RL6VOEeKEkA' video_id: 'RL6VOEeKEkA' date: 2026-08-01 duration_sec: 506 --- # Robinhood wants to replace your bank > Source: [Robinhood wants to replace your bank](https://youtube.com/watch?v=RL6VOEeKEkA) ## Summary In this interview, a Robinhood executive discusses the company's ambitions to become a full-stack financial platform, offering banking, investing, event contracts, and even IPO underwriting. The conversation covers the evolving customer base, the growth of education savings accounts, and the expanding events business. ### Key Points - **A full-stack financial app** [00:01] — Robinhood now offers a banking app with checking, savings and credit cards, a non-custodial wallet for DeFi, and tools to help parents start children investing. The goal is to cover the customer's entire financial life. - **Tech company in finance, not fintech** [00:27] — The company sees 'fintech' as a misnomer: it is a technology company operating in a highly regulated financial space, with engineers everywhere. Success is measured by whether customers use Robinhood for their finances. - **The core customer has matured** [00:53] — Median customer is 35, married, educated, with one or two kids and a pet, widely distributed across the US. A few years ago the average age was 27–28; customers are aging with the platform and adopting more products like Robinhood Gold. - **Gaining from incumbents and new investors** [01:35] — Robinhood is taking share from legacy incumbents by moving fast, and about 50% of new customers say they are new to investing entirely, while the rest come from other platforms. - **Techno-optimists buy the dip** [02:14] — Robinhood investors generally take a long-term view and bought drawdowns in Q2, investing in technology, chip companies, AI and energy. They believe in America's future. - **Education accounts off to a strong start** [02:54] — Over 7 million people have signed up for the education savings accounts, with over $1 billion flowing through the system, in partnership with Treasury, National Design Studio and BNY. The product is meant for low-cost, buy-and-hold ETFs, with simulation for 18- and 60-year horizons. - **Event contracts are a breakout business** [04:30] — The 18-month-old events business is growing fast, offering thousands of contracts across economic, sports, financial and lifestyle categories. Vertical integration of the exchange enables better pricing, and customers even buy weather contracts during storms. - **Crypto legislation is nice-to-have** [05:26] — The Clarity Act would provide clear rules, but Robinhood doesn't depend on it for high yield—banking and brokerage already do. The company is building infrastructure such as tokenization, claiming the fastest ever to 100 million transactions and over $10 billion in DEX swap volume. - **IPO access: stand for access, not price calls** [06:20] — Robinhood doesn't comment on specific stocks but believes everyone should have access to historic IPOs like SpaceX. Nearly 1 million customers placed orders; the company stays long-term bullish and will not block access to riskier assets. - **Underwriting as the next frontier** [07:38] — Robinhood is now FINRA-approved to underwrite IPOs and expects near-term deals, aiming to compete with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Longer term, it wants to connect venture investing, underwriting and post-public services. ### Conclusion Robinhood is clearly expanding far beyond trading, aiming to be the primary financial home for its customers. The company's bets on event contracts, education accounts, and IPO underwriting signal a long-term ambition to reshape how retail investors access markets. ## Transcript apps. And if you look at it, we can products. So, Vlad actually demoed a lot of our apps yesterday. So, everyone started. We have a banking app now, you can get checking, savings, credit card. We have a non-custodial wallet where you can uh use DeFi. And we have the Trump help uh America's children start to investing. And so, the more you look at financial lives, Robinhood should be able to do that for you. fintech? >> Uh you know, fintech is a little bit of a misnomer. We are a technology company that happens to be in finance. And so, engineers, everybody is there. We're highly regulated, and we take that matter what the title is. Like, are we serving customers' lives? And if you ask them, many people say, "I bank with Robinhood. I do my finances with >> Who's the core customer nowadays? >> Yeah, so if you look at our median customer, 35 years old, tend to be widely distributed across the US, uh tend to be married, educated, one or two kids, cat or a dog. Like, that is [laughter] that is our prototical prototypical customer. And they want to typically come in, I want to start my first equities, I want to have a credit card. Then they discover Robinhood Gold. Then they start to use years ago, our average customer was actually 27, 28. Our customers are aging Now, they want to use more and more of our products. And so, that's how we're about this on the on the earnings call. Where do you think you're gaining market >> Uh a lot of the legacy incumbents. And so, uh for us, as I mentioned, we are a technology company, we can move fast. You can never get complacent. And so, disadvantage if you're not trading on Robinhood. That's why we're iterating, that's why we we keep coming out with a lot of these newer uh vectors. And if incumbents, a lot of it's actually new customers, about 50% of them tell us we by design, 50% are coming from other places, but 50% are also new to the over the place. >> The S&P 500 is still, you know, even with the the tech semiconductor route, still trading near record highs. What mentioned it, too, a little bit, I think, new investors. >> Uh that those sub-25-year-olds, is that bringing them into the market? >> So, a lot of our investors, they tend to be techno-optimists. So, they tend to a long-term view. So, anytime you see drawdowns, for example, so in Q2, we saw an opportunity to invest. And so, they invest in technology companies, chip companies, AI, energy. They really believe in America's future, and that's think a lot of people think of Robinhood as, "Hey, it's just a trading account." in their retirement accounts or their ETFs. And what we tend to see is they're view, and so that's what we see a lot of customers start with. Trump accounts doing since launch? >> Oh, it's it's going fantastic. And so, Treasury, the National Design Studio, BNY. Uh we shared some numbers yesterday, but over 7 million people have already signed up. A billion and a through our system. But, the really nice part is we are just getting started. So, portal. If you're an employer like Robinhood, for example, we'll match our Donations, Michael and Susan Dell gave a massive donation, and so we're building transformational for the next generation, and this is just V1, but the >> How do you see that, you know, these accounts evolving over time? >> Yeah, so they're meant to be low-cost ETFs, buy and hold. You can actually go in the app and simulate what's going to happen in 18 years and 60 years. What of compound interest. If you start early, it's actually really powerful. people to discover investing, whether it's the parents or whether it's the investment has been focused on education. How do you explain the stock start? And then once they get started, it open up a lot of different doors. >> Within those 7 million accounts, are those new customers to Robinhood, or >> So, these are people who have signed up to use it either directly in the app or IRS website. So, we're not including sole trustee and custodian. So, all the assets that come in, we custody. We numbers today. So, for us, we're starting with let's and then what you'll see over time is you know, how do we share it with our >> One business I think I know it surprised me is the strength of this events business. It has come on strong what 18 months since launch. and what are the drivers behind that? >> Yeah, it's it's been incredible to see working on. We're adding more selections. We have multiple thousands of contracts today across economic, sports, financial, lifestyle. So, making look at it, you mentioned it's only 18 months old. The app has got better, the has got better, so we're working on that. We also vertically integrated in exchange. By doing that, we can actually give customers better pricing. And so, lowered our pricing for customers. So, not only is the product getting better, just scratching the surface. You know, we said before we're at the beginning of a a super cycle for this. What we're seeing is customers want to use it. expect. You know, I've given an example before, but during weather storms, we've buying weather contracts. Like, that's not something we're expecting. >> Yeah, it's So, it's a really brand new growing asset class, and I think we look big as the equities market. >> The passing of the Clarity Act, does that reawaken crypto? >> You know, I think it's nice to have. So, it to pass. We believe it's important to have legislation. Really, you don't want administration. You just want to know what the rules are. For us, it's not important, but if it doesn't, we have other ways to give customers high yield through banking or the brokerage. Um so we're hoping it passes. Um but again, are we focused on? We're focused on the infrastructure layer. Tokenization, we fastest ever to 100 million transactions, over 10 billion of DEX swap volume. And so if you build great infrastructure and products, the asset on. >> the last time you and I talked, it was around or just before the SpaceX IPO. And uh Robinhood gave access or what was And uh Robinhood gave access or what was pre-IPO access for SpaceX. How do you How do you assess the stock slide since IPO? And what do you say to those retail investors that now I mean they've gotten burned by whatever I mean the stock's >> Yeah, it's a good question. So we don't comment on any particular stock. So it's a In general, you know, we stand for access. Uh stocks can go up, stocks can go down. It didn't seem right to us that one of the most historic IPOs in were really excited to be able to support it. We had nearly a million customers that put in orders. Um and we'll see what happens on the long long-term bullish. And so many of them are probably still buying it right now. support them. >> I was just going to ask you. So you will you will still support you will still do what you did for SpaceX for other IPOs? Even though, look, a year after a lot of IPOs go public, they all I mean a lot of >> Yeah, it's um it's a it's a mix. Like some go up and some go down. We don't going to say you can't access this. I think that's even worse. Customers it's important. These are riskier assets. But for us, if you give education, they're adults, they should be able to make decisions. So we're the uh the upcoming IPOs. We actually underwriter now. So we actually want to go even deeper in helping both companies >> Uh we announced this a few months ago. And uh we haven't underwritten an IPO FINRA approved. And so you should expect in the near term, you may actually see >> So, that mean you mean going toe-to-toe, going back to the bank question, going Goldman Sachs? >> We will we will be up there and I hope about Goldman or Morgan Stanley underwriting an IPO, you'll be thinking >> How big is this team? I mean, how big is the team you're hiring for these website, we have a lot of open roles >> I'm applying right now. That's my prior >> Uh right now we are building it out. It's nascent and I think we have said But this is one of our long-term bets. Like we want to be able to serve ventures fund business where we can invest in new companies. We can then do Ventures Fund 1. We can help take you public and then after you go public we vision and it's just another step there. >> well, that's cool stuff. Shir, good to see you. Thanks for coming down. Appreciate you having me.