Robinhood’s Equity Tokenization Gets Under Way on Swarm Platform

Swarm Fund, the blockchain fintech startup specialized in tokenizing the equity of privately-held companies for trading, announced on Wednesday the launch of the pre-funding round for the Robinhood Equity Token (RHET).

The plans for tokenizing Robinhood’s equity were announced in June.

As Swarm explained in its media release, qualifying investors can reserve their stake in a fund set up to hold equity in Robinhood, a popular stock and cryptocurrency trading app. Upon the accomplishment of the minimum funding goal, a Swarm entity created on the platform will purchase equity through partnering with Robinhood ex-employees and other equity owners and convert the funds raised into RHETs. In this way, outside investors will obtain an equity stake in the otherwise privately-owned Robinhood.

“Secondary equities transactions and refinancing of legal entities which hold private company equity are not new in the United States. What’s new here is the tokenization of these assets, and the doors opened by this innovation,” Swarm Fund CEO Philipp Pieper said. “One of the key innovations of tokenization is that token owners can participate in the value creation of the very network they are part of.”

Swarm Fund is a blockchain fund for private equity and provides infrastructure for asset tokenization. A security token built on the SRC20 standard serves to represent each asset.

The Robinhood token is the first of many Swarm plans to launch. However, it is not clear how this will be received by Robinhood. Earlier this year, Swarm announced plans to tokenize shares of Coinbase, Robinhood, Ripple, and Chinese ride-sharing company Didi. The idea was not welcomed either by Ripple or Coinbase, the latter going as far as to send Swarm a cease-and-desist letter to ban it from tokenizing and selling its equity to investors.