Robinhood launches TradFi perps in Europe with 10x leverage

Robinhood has launched perpetual futures tied to commodities, ETFs and currencies for eligible European users, offering up to 10x leverage on gold, silver, crude oil and the euro-dollar exchange rate, according to Bloomberg. The move extends the app's perps franchise, previously US-only and crypto-focused, into traditional asset classes on a regulated EU footing.

Why it matters

The launch lands on the same day Robinhood unveiled a sweeping product roadmap: a decentralized lending product, AI-powered trading accounts for US crypto users, a proprietary blockchain layer, broader access to tokenized US stocks, a revised fee schedule for professional crypto traders, planned AI agents capable of executing digital asset trades, a near-term UK crypto launch and a Singapore brokerage license for its local entity.

The shape of the bundle is more interesting than any single feature. Robinhood is repositioning from a retail brokerage app to a full-stack trading platform spanning perpetuals, tokenized equities, on-chain lending, AI execution and a proprietary settlement layer.

Market impact

In the US, Robinhood rolled out Crypto Earn, letting users lend USDG stablecoins through self-custody wallets at an estimated 7% annual yield, a yield number that competes directly with centralised lending products from BlockFi's successor offerings and DeFi blue chips. The combination of self-custody and a stablecoin yield product is notable: most US retail platforms route yield through a custodian, not a user-controlled wallet.