Robinhood defends Wall Street’s slow crypto pivot
Robinhood said at Consensus Miami 2026 that Wall Street is now actively building on crypto rails, though institutional adoption is moving slower and more fragmented than the industry expected.
- Executives from Robinhood-owned Bitstamp, Ondo Finance, and Babylon Labs told Consensus Miami 2026 that banks are actively integrating blockchain infrastructure and tokenized products.
- Robinhood VP Nicola White said the conversation with banks has shifted from asking what blockchain is to asking how to build on it.
- Panelists said institutional adoption will develop along two parallel tracks: regulated US finance and offshore permissionless crypto markets.
Executives from Robinhood-owned Bitstamp, Ondo Finance, and Babylon Labs told Consensus Miami 2026 on Wednesday that Wall Street’s migration into crypto is real but slower and more fragmented than the industry expected.
The panel, titled “Is the Wall Street Herd STILL Coming?”, framed institutional adoption as settled in direction but uncertain in pace.
Robinhood VP of Crypto Institutions Nicola White said the dynamic with banks has shifted materially. “We’re not having conversations anymore about what blockchain is,” she said.
“Now it’s about, how do we help them build?” Ondo President Ian De Bode pointed to partnerships with Broadridge and the DTCC to tokenise securities and enable blockchain-based shareholder voting as evidence that institutional pipelines have moved from planning to production.
White also flagged risks around retail product velocity. She noted that 50% of Robinhood’s new Q1 platform users were first-time investors, and warned that 100x perpetual leverage products carry risks “that maybe people don’t understand.”
Panelists said adoption will split into two tracks: regulated US finance and an offshore permissionless crypto market running in parallel. As crypto.news tracked, Robinhood has been expanding institutional and retail crypto infrastructure since its Bitstamp acquisition, with crypto notional volumes reaching $25 billion in February 2026, up 74% year-on-year.
The Consensus panel framed that figure as a starting point, with Wall Street’s integration still in its early stages despite the conversation having clearly shifted.
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