The online brokerage eToro is exploring whether to spin up its own blockchain, CEO Yoni Assia told Fortune in a Tuesday interview. “We’re now evaluating a couple of potential partnerships with both layer 1s and layer 2,” he said, referring to two different types of blockchains. “So, we might launch basically a side chain of eToro.”
“We can’t run today the millions of transactions that we’re transacting on a monthly basis on existing blockchains,” he said. “We’ll need, by definition, to have a dedicated blockchain if we want to run the entire eToro ecosystem.”
The company’s shares were down almost 4% since markets opened Tuesday.
Tokenized stocks on eToro will be tradeable 24 hours a day, five days a week, and will include 100 of the most popular companies and ETFs listed in the U.S., according to the announcement. The online brokerage is first opening up access to the blockchain-based assets to users based only in Europe on a wait-list basis, Assia said.
EToro’s plans for its own blockchain and tokenized stocks mirror similar moves from its competitor Robinhood.
While eToro’s tokenized stock offerings currently don’t include private companies, Assia said he’s looking into it: “That’s definitely on the radar. I think we’ll see that in the near future.”
