Fifteen years ago, in a small apartment near the French Riviera, 21-year-old Johann Kerbrat worked at McDonald's during the day and taught himself programming at night.
Now, as Robinhood's Senior Vice President and Head of Crypto Business, he returns to his hometown with the company's most ambitious crypto product suite.
Cannes "Past"
"My studio was probably smaller than your bathroom," Kerbrat recalled. Before enrolling at the nearby University of Nice, he quit his job and founded his first fintech startup - a no-code payment company that helped small merchants build e-commerce websites without hiring developers.
"It was the early stage of e-commerce. At that time, merchants either had to spend tens of thousands of euros hiring agency or couldn't conduct online business. Our idea was to let people build their own stores without technical knowledge - somewhat like Shopify today."
The timing was perfect. In the early 2010s, online commerce was booming, and Kerbrat's tools gave small merchants a chance to compete. This also made him realize how fragile and expensive the global financial system was.
Enlightenment: Bitcoin Whitepaper
Kerbrat later recalled that a conversation with a Greek classmate made him realize the "fragility" of the traditional banking system.
That classmate told him his family's bank accounts were frozen during the Eurozone crisis, and life came to a standstill. Meanwhile, merchants on his platform continuously reported expensive transaction fees, complex refund processes, and credit card fraud as uncontrollable sunk costs.
"Then I read the Bitcoin whitepaper," he said, "and I thought: 'Well, this is the solution to all these problems.'"
That was in 2010. Kerbrat began assembling mining machines, deploying wallets, and trying to build Bitcoin-based payment interfaces. He didn't get rich overnight with Bitcoin or become a speculator, but tried to understand the real possibilities behind the technology.
"At that stage, you realize that cryptocurrency is not just an asset, but a structural transformation."
Leading Robinhood's "Bold Bet" on Crypto
Later, he worked at Airbnb and Uber as a core engineer, and before joining Robinhood, he was VP of Engineering at Iron Fish (a privacy Layer 1 blockchain project), focusing on privacy technologies like zero-knowledge proofs. This experience brought him back to the crypto space and made him realize that "user experience" is the biggest weakness in the crypto industry.
In 2021, he officially joined Robinhood Crypto as CTO and was promoted to Senior Vice President and General Manager in 2023.
It had been exactly 13 years since he first opened the Bitcoin whitepaper.
Under Kerbrat's leadership, Robinhood Crypto has launched several important products:
- In 2022, Robinhood Wallet was launched. It's a non-custodial wallet similar to MetaMask, but with a clearer interface more oriented towards beginner users. He describes it as a "Web3 browser for ordinary people".
- From 2023, they began supporting Bitcoin transfers and on-chain asset withdrawals, marking Robinhood's transition from a "trading interface" to "crypto infrastructure".
- In 2024, he led Robinhood's acquisition of European crypto exchange Bitstamp, aiming to enter the European market using Bitstamp's 50+ licenses. In his view, this was inevitable given the unclear US regulations: "We can't bet our future on 'if the SEC relaxes regulations'".
He emphasizes that "compliance is not an obstacle, but a market barrier". This is key to Robinhood's foothold in the crypto business.
Glamorous "Return"
Now, on the Cannes coastline, the same coastline where he once lived and worked night shifts at fast food, Kerbrat is in a Belle Époque mansion called "Château de la Croix des Gardes", participating in the release of Robinhood's most ambitious crypto product suite.
On Monday, the company announced expanding tokenized stock and ETF issuance in Europe, launching crypto staking services in the US, offering perpetual futures for eligible EU traders, and introducing a new Layer 2 blockchain optimized for real-world asset settlement and all-weather trading.
"This is absolutely surreal," Kerbrat said sitting in the iconic Carlton Hotel, a five-star landmark hotel that was once unattainable to him. "When I was young, I often walked past here - I never thought I could stay here."
Robinhood's New Layout
This launch coincides with the first Ethereum community conference in Cannes and Robinhood's recent regulatory approvals in Europe.
Robinhood's latest move is its most serious attempt to integrate traditional finance with blockchain-based infrastructure.
After the announcement, Robinhood's stock price hit a historic high, with over 100% growth this year.
Kerbrat states that their goal is not to showcase features, but to make crypto technology "invisible" in the background, which he compares to "pipes".
"You don't think about how water gets to your faucet," he says, "you just expect it to work when you turn it on."
But there are still "pipes" that need to be built.
Monday's core announcement is tokenized stocks and ETFs, now open to users in 30 EU and European Economic Area countries. These tokens are initially built on Arbitrum, providing 5-day, 24-hour trading access, supporting dividend payments, with no commissions or spreads from Robinhood. Eventually, they will migrate to a custom Layer 2 blockchain that will support tokenized assets, seamless bridging, and self-custody.
In the US, Robinhood is launching staking services for Ethereum and Solana, allowing users to earn rewards by supporting network operations. In Europe, crypto perpetual futures will offer up to 3x leverage for eligible users, with trading routed through Bitstamp. Other upgrades include smart exchange routing, tax batch management, and advanced charting tools - all designed to make crypto trading as seamless and intuitive as stock trading.
"When we talk about mass adoption," Johann Kerbrat says, "this is what it looks like. A product people use without understanding how it works."
For Johann Kerbrat, who spent his teenage years in Cannes and Nice, this return is more than symbolic. It demonstrates how far he has come - and how much still feels the same as before.
His father worked in IT, and his mother took care of him and his sister at home. One day, his father brought home an old, bulky Apple computer with a black and white screen, which was the "spark". At 7, he started trying to use the computer. At 11, he was regularly writing code. By 17, he was already trying to fix internet economy flaws he observed.
Kerbrat's parents specially came to watch the launch. He says they still remember those early days - the small apartment, the first lines of code, and endless conversations with merchants who didn't quite believe that anyone could build an e-commerce website without knowing programming.
"We chose Cannes because the license approval and conference are here," Kerbrat said, "but I won't pretend it feels good." He paused for a moment, organizing his thoughts, "I never thought I would come back this way."
Note: The article information is comprehensively compiled from CNBC, Unchained Podcast, Robinhood Investor Relations official website, etc.
