Original title: 15 years ago, he turned over a hamburger in Cannes, and now he is at the helm of Robinhoods global crypto expansion
Original source: BitPush
Fifteen years ago, in a cramped apartment near the French Riviera, 21-year-old Johann Kerbrat worked at McDonald’s during the day and taught himself to code at night. Now, as Robinhood’s senior vice president and director of crypto, he’s back with the company’s most ambitious suite of crypto products yet.
Cannes Past
“My studio was probably smaller than your bathroom,” recalls Kerbrat, who quit his job to launch his first fintech startup, a no-code payments company that helped small merchants build e-commerce sites without hiring developers, before enrolling at the nearby University of Nice.
“That was the beginning of e-commerce. Merchants at the time either had to spend tens of thousands of euros hiring an agency or couldn’t do business online. Our idea was to allow people to set up their own stores without technical knowledge – a bit like Shopify today.” The timing was perfect. In the early 2010s, online commerce was booming, and Keblat’s tools gave small merchants a chance to compete. It also made him realize how fragile and expensive the global financial system was.
Enlightenment: Bitcoin White Paper
Kerbrat later recalled that it was a conversation with a Greek classmate that made him realize the fragility of the traditional banking system. The classmate told him that his familys bank account was frozen during the eurozone crisis, and life was once stagnant. At the same time, merchants on his platform also kept giving feedback: the handling fees were expensive, the refund process was complicated, and credit card fraud became an uncontrollable sunk cost.
“Then I read the Bitcoin white paper,” he said, “and I was like, ‘OK, this is the solution to everything.’ ”
That was in 2010. Kerbrat started assembling mining machines, deploying wallets, and trying to build a payment interface based on Bitcoin. He did not use Bitcoin to get rich overnight, nor did he choose to be a speculator, but tried to understand the real possibilities behind this technology. At that stage you will realize that cryptocurrency is not just an asset, but a structural change.
Leading Robinhood to gamble big on cryptocurrencies
Later, he joined Airbnb and Uber and became one of the core engineers of the platform. Before joining Robinhood, he also served as VP of Engineering at Iron Fish (a privacy Layer 1 blockchain project), focusing on privacy technologies such as zero-knowledge proof. This experience allowed him to return to the crypto circle and made him realize that user experience is the biggest shortcoming of the crypto industry.
In 2021, he officially joined Robinhood Crypto as Chief Technology Officer and was promoted to Senior Vice President and General Manager in 2023. It has been 13 years since he first opened the Bitcoin white paper.
Under Kerbrat’s leadership, Robinhood Crypto has launched a number of important products:
In 2022, Robinhood Wallet was launched. This is a non-custodial wallet that functions similarly to MetaMask, but with a simpler interface and more oriented towards beginners. He described it as a Web3 browser built for ordinary people.
· Starting in 2023, support for Bitcoin transfers and on-chain asset withdrawals will begin, marking Robinhood’s move from a “trading interface” to a “crypto infrastructure.”
In 2024, he led Robinhood to acquire the European crypto trading platform Bitstamp, attempting to use the more than 50 licenses held by Bitstamp as a fulcrum to enter the European market.
In his view, this is an inevitable choice under the uncertain regulatory environment in the United States: We cannot bet our future on <if the SEC relaxes regulation>. He emphasized that compliance is not an obstacle, but a market barrier. This is also the key to Robinhoods ability to gain a foothold in the crypto business.
A gorgeous return
Now, on the same coastline in Cannes where he once lived and worked the fast-food midnight shift, Kerbrat is in the midst of launching the most ambitious suite of crypto products in Robinhood’s history, in a Belle Époque mansion called the Château de la Croix des Gardes.
On Monday, the company announced that it would expand the issuance of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs in Europe, launch crypto staking services in the United States, provide perpetual futures to eligible EU traders, and launch a new Layer 2 blockchain optimized for real-world asset settlement and 24/7 trading.
“It’s definitely surreal,” Kerbrat said, sitting inside the iconic Carlton Hotel, a five-star landmark that was once out of reach for him. “When I was younger, I used to walk past this place — I never thought I’d be able to live here.”
Robinhoods New Layout
The launch coincides with the first Ethereum Community Conference in Cannes and Robinhood’s recent regulatory approval in Europe. Robinhood’s latest move is its most serious attempt yet to merge traditional finance with blockchain-based infrastructure. Robinhood shares hit an all-time high following the announcement, and are up more than 100% this year.
Kerbrat said the goal is not to show off features, but to make encryption technology invisible in the background, which he compared to plumbing. You dont think about how water gets to your tap, he said, You just expect it to just turn on and work.
But there is still pipeline to be built.
The core of Mondays release is tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, which are now available to users in 30 EU and EEA countries. Initially built on Arbitrum, these tokens provide 24-hour trading access 5 days a week, support dividend payments, and Robinhood does not charge commissions or spreads. Eventually, they will be migrated to a custom Layer 2 blockchain that will support tokenized assets, seamless bridging, and self-custody.
In the U.S., 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 to eligible users, with trades routed through Bitstamp. Other upgrades include smart trading platform routing, tax batch management, and advanced charting tools — all designed to make cryptocurrency trading as seamless and intuitive as stock trading.
“When we talk about mass adoption,” Johann Kerbrat said, “this is what it looks like. A product that people use — without having to understand how it works.”
For Johann Kerbrat, who spent his teenage years in Cannes and Nice, this return is more than symbolic. It’s a testament to how far he’s come — and how much still feels the same.
His father worked in IT, and his mother stayed at home to look after him and his sister. One day, his father brought home a clunky old Apple computer with a black-and-white screen, and that was the spark. At 7, he began experimenting with computers. At 11, he was writing code regularly. By 17, he was trying to fix the flaws he saw in the internet economy.
Kerbrat’s parents, who came to the event, said they remember those early days — the tiny apartment, the first lines of code, the endless conversations with merchants who didn’t quite believe him — when anyone could build an e-commerce site without knowing how to code.
“We chose Cannes because the licensing and the convention are here,” Kerbrat said. “But I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a good feeling.” He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “I never thought I’d be back like this.”
Note: The information in this article is compiled from CNBC, Unchained podcast, Robinhood Investor Relations official website, etc.
