A Conversation with Robinhood Founder Vlad Tenev - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Well, suffice to say that Vlatt Tanv is a man on a mission to democratize finance. He says that access to the financial system, financial market should not be limited to a select few, the privilege. It is the fundamental rights of each and every one of us. That's why Robin Hood offers commissionfree trading now with blockchain technology maturing. I can say that with cryptocurrencies and stable coins gaining traction, tokenization too, perhaps some say on the cusp of a revolution.

This is yet another opportunity to deepen financial inclusion for Robin Hood. How does that vision look like? Well, here's the man who can answer all the questions. Mathematician, technologist, entrepreneur, and of course, co-founder of Robin Hood Vlad.

Thank you.

Great to share the stage with you.

Thank you for not calling me Tradfi. Not that there's anything wrong with Tradfi, but it is a little bit of a of a insult around here, right?

It's okay. Right crowd. Let's start with tokenization. It does seem like a good starting point. You know, some say that we're on the cusp of a revolution.

Some say this perhaps could be the new ETF moment for finance. I know you agree.

Yes. Um, I think tokenization is like a freight train. It can't be stopped and eventually it's going to eat the entire financial system. Now, uh, the interesting thing about tokenization actually, why don't we have a little bit of fun? How how many people in the audience currently own a tokenized real world asset?

Okay. Okay.

Not many. I see about

So, this is the thing about tokenization. A lot of people have been talking about it for a very very long time but there's not a lot of action right so uh earlier this summer we did a conference in the south of France where we actually launched uh stock tokens which are tokenized versions of US stocks we rolled out to about 200 of the of the biggest names and then we recently expanded that

well we have the the public stocks which uh are a little bit more uh widespread and we also as you mentioned tokenized uh SpaceX and OpenAI. We were the first to do that and we gave those as a gift to uh our our European customers. So if you if you sign up and on board to our tokenized products in the EU uh you'll you'll get a nice gift of tokenized OpenAI and SpaceX. Um but but actually you guys missed something when you didn't raise your hands. How how many own a stable coin?

Okay, so that's a little bit more, right? That's maybe uh still probably 30% of people, which shows you we're early. But a stable coin is a tokenized real world asset. And when I explain to people what's the benefit of tokenizing a stock when you have a a traditional stock um I think sometimes it's helpful to reason by analogy and say you know for stable coins in the US we talk about it as this is going to be the best way to get exposure to US assets and it's going to further uh what we call US dollar dominance uh abroad. There's a lot of talk about how the US dollar has been for a long time the global reserve asset, but there's a lot of competition and and you know, one way that we'd like to stay ahead is by making it the default uh the default way to get access to uh dollars in the digital in the digital crypto realm.

So that's why, you know, stable coins have been such a priority in the US. And if you do own a dollar stable coin, it's sort of like the the most basic tokenized asset. So in the same way, um that stable coins are a bucket of dollars that you mint and burn tokens against. You can do that with stocks, you can do that with real estate and other real world assets, private stocks, which I really am interested in as well. And uh I think it'll become the default way to get exposure to US stocks outside the US.

I think that's what makes it so exciting.

Question is how soon will that happen? We talk about tokenizing real estate.

Yeah.

And Bloom ran a story today about how the Red Cox had this idea of tokenizing President Trump's real estate. One, how feasible, how soon can that happen, and where do you go from there?

Yeah, tokenizing real estate mechanically looks very much like tokenizing a private company. you essentially buy, you know, one property or a collection of properties in a a company, then you tokenize that company much like, you know, you would tokenize OpenAI or SpaceX.

It's not it's not more complicated than tokenizing stocks when it comes to real estate. Is there greater complexity?

I mean, both both of these things we've we've demonstrated. And in the in the case of stocks, it's live right now in the EU. So the the only complexity uh remaining is really making sure that you have the appropriate lensure and the the regulatory clarity in in many jurisdictions but uh I think that'll come I think you'll it'll it started in Europe but it'll expand to the rest of the world and uh unfortunately but realistically US will probably be uh somewhat behind definitely Europe but US will probably be among the class economies to actually fully tokenize, but I think it's inevitable in the US as well.

When you have conversations with regulators, what are some of the outstanding concerns, key concerns when it comes to tokenization? Some perhaps are drawn, you know, to perhaps Robin Hood walking a tight rope when it comes to tokenization. Is there any basis for concern?

I think it depends on the asset. Um I think there's minor concerns you know all the typical things customer protection what happens if the underlying deviates from the value of the token and how do you reconcile that but I think the US the biggest challenge in the US is that we actually have infrastructure that basically works. It's it's kind of like, you know, in Asia you have bullet trains that are very very fast and people have been asking for a very long time, why don't we have these fast trains in the US? Instead, we have trains that go medium speed. And you know, it's sort of like if if you can get from point A to point B in 3 hours, getting there in 2 hours might not be worth the incremental investment.

So, in the same way, we have a financial system that works decently well in the US. Uh, maybe you can't trade tokenized stocks, but you know, Robin Hood's done a pretty decent job making stocks available to the mass market. We have, you know, over 25 million customers in the US. Uh, now through our innovations in Tradfi, you can trade 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. So you can't trade on Saturdays yet.

Uh we're looking to solve that. But but essentially you have a system that works capably. And so I think the incremental effort to go from that to fully tokenized is just going to take longer.

So look into the crystal ball. When will I be able to trade tokenized Apple for instance 247 globally?

Yeah. Uh globally is a big question. If you if you were in the EU and you onboarded to to Robin Hood or um you know there there's a couple of other companies that are offering tokenized versions of US stocks, you can do it today. Um and and the question really is we have the technology to make that available on DeFi and all over the world and it's just going to depend jurisdiction by jurisdiction on

August

five years.

Yeah. when you would do it. I I think most major markets will uh have some framework in the next 5 years by the time it's sort of like near 100%. That that might take a decade or more.

That's on tokenization. The other thing that is huge right now is the predictions markets. You came out to say that you've breached what four billion event contracts and two billion in just in the third quarter. what's driving the surge?

Yeah, I think uh so so to give context, we launched our prediction markets offering a little bit under a year ago with the US presidential election

and on the back of that your stocks rose tremendously.

Yeah. Well, I I don't know if you can attribute it just to prediction markets at that point. Um but yeah, there there we're in many businesses, right? We have a a large retail cryptocurrency business. Obviously, uh as a result of the elections, the stock market did very very well.

Uh and and actually because so many different assets responded so uh directly to the results of the election, it sort of illustrates the power of prediction markets as a technology. So you might have a thesis as an investor or trader that you know if the Democrats or the Republicans win the election, it's going to affect prices in some way, but that thesis is indirect. You have to you have to figure out, okay, how is it going to affect prices? And you see this a lot with company earnings. Maybe a company beats earnings, but there's something in the guidance that actually results in the stock going down.

And so prediction markets allow you to very precisely uh monetize your point of view. So for the presidential election, maybe you don't know how, you know, a Trump victory would have affected Bitcoin or other cryptos, but but maybe you're confident that you would you would have a Trump victory and and you could make that trade and sort of like directly monetize uh what people believe is their unique intuition. So, so the elections did very well for for Robin Hood prediction markets and a lot of people had skepticism about whether this would only be an election thing, whether it's like prediction markets are going to be relevant every four years but not so much in between. Uh and and I think what we've demonstrated along with uh the other prediction markets platforms is that it's not just an election thing. It it's really much bigger than that.

And now we have prediction markets on sports and American football and college football have been particularly popular there. You have prediction markets on culture. You have them on AI. I mean one of the contracts we offer on Robin Hood is what's going to be the best AI model. And

you know for me this is very interesting because we have so many it just like the elections AI is going to affect the economy. And if you have uh superior knowledge and you really understand the AI space now, now now we have products for you to to trade that point of view and and actually directly monetize it. So, uh yeah, I'm I'm excited. There was a report a couple of days ago that Robin Hood prediction markets, this was a Piper Sandler report, was on a 200 million run rate after, you know, less than a year. Wii, which just shows that, you know, retail is super interested in these products.

It's not without criticism though, right? Some point to the blurring of lines between finance and gambling.

Yeah, for sure. There there is definitely criticism. I think with a lot of innovations um and I I think prediction markets, one thing hopefully we can all agree on is it it's a big innovation. It's a change. People tend to compare it to uh what's been there before, right?

The whole, you know, the car is just a horseless carriage thing. So, I think prediction markets has some similarities with traditional sports betting and gambling. There's also similarities with active trading in that they're exchangeraded products that that happen on uh on exchanges. It also has some similarities to traditional media news products because there's a lot of people that use prediction markets not to trade or speculate, but because they want to know who's going to win the election. what are people saying is the most likely thing to happen with the Fed rate cuts and and so there's a there's a passive use case which is just uh source of information.

So I I don't think it's quite exactly any one of these three things but some hybrid that uh has actually strong potential to transform all three of those massive industries.

You talked earlier about how you're in many businesses, right? How important will prediction markets be in the bigger scheme of things for Robin Hood?

What kind of growth are you anticipating?

I mean, I mean, certainly looking backwards, uh, it's it's been among the fastest growing, if not the fastest growing individual business lines, and I've talked a lot about how we have nine business lines now that generate over 100 million in annual revenue. uh and you know uh prediction markets and there couple of others bitstamp have been waiting in the wings and I would be very surprised if we're not up to a much larger number than that in the future. Um so I think it it's interesting for the for the active trading space uh we look at all these assets as important. We look to be number one in all assets that we trade, including prediction markets. But we also um the long-term goal of Robin Hood is for anyone anywhere in the world to be able to keep all of their money and all of their assets on platform.

That's what uh our MC when he said financial super app, that's that's basically what he meant. It should be the home for all of your money. So we obviously want to want to compete for traders across all assets, but what we want to do for each individual customer is be the best lowest cost, best user experience way to hold your assets, whatever those assets may be. And I I don't think 100% of the average person's assets are going to be in prediction markets, but there is going to be a small portion of the portfolio. If I had to guess, you know, mid singledigit percent, something in that ballpark that's going in and out more systematically uh to to these discretionary trades, be it, you know, prediction markets, options, futures, or uh or even individual stocks can sometimes be in that bucket.

We want to be the best place for that bucket alongside the best place for your retirement, your passively managed investments, um, and you know, your banking needs, which we're now rolling out Robin Hood banking, and we have, uh, what I think is the best credit card. Recently announced, uh, over 450,000 card holders. So, um, yeah, ideally, we're the place where you can deposit your paycheck, you you can have your savings with us at the highest possible APY. all of your investments and your retirement. And if you want to trade prediction markets or trade options and you have an actively managed portion of the portfolio, we think we can.

So, a super app, a one-stop shop. I'll be remiss not to talk about cryptocurrencies. What a ride, right? We I think what Bitcoin is about 112,000, but we saw that selloff recently where, you know, I think $300,000 300 uh million dollars were wiped out. But I'm just wondering, you're going all in on cryptocurrencies.

What exactly does that mean? And what are you looking at doing in the next 12 to 24 months?

Yeah. Well, you know, it's it's a interesting question. Probably your words, not mine. Uh I'm going all in on everything. Uh all in on everything.

Uh big big chip stack. Um, I think that I don't I don't know how much uh how controversial this would be to say with this audience, but when I say this with a more general audience, very controversial. I actually think cryptocurrency and traditional finance have been living in two separate worlds for a while, but they're going to fully merge. And we're talking about tokenized stocks and other real world assets. stable coin, which is an early form of this, a great example of this.

I think that crypto technology has so many advantages over the traditional way we're doing things that in the future there's going to be no distinction. It's kind of like how technology itself was viewed as a sector of the economy for a very long time. Still is. You know, there's technology companies and everything else. I think crypto will go through a same transition where we're sort of like thinking about it in its own bucket but eventually you know everything will be on chain in in some form or another and the distinction will kind of disappear.

What do you make of how traditional finance you know the likes of your your NASDAQs and your S&Ps uh

how ready are they for what's coming? I think that the challenge with uh traditional finance particularly on the more infrastructure layer is they have a lot of stakeholders and if you think about where they generate the bulk of their revenues it's not from you know cryptoreated initiatives or firms and a lot of these stakeholders because they're already quite big are are going to be resistant and slower to adopt technologies. They're going to be late adopters. they're going to wait until uh it's proven before adopting it. And and I think that's why uh for us um we've had to do greater vertical integration than you know we we would normally want to do in Tradfi.

We acquired Bitstamp. We have our own exchange. uh or building our own chain because I don't think to be at the frontier of of crypto that you could rely on traditional uh infrastructure providers. I think they'll get there eventually but uh it'll it'll take a very long time.

We have 38 seconds. We have not even managed to speak about AI. So just one question on AI. I know that you're big on this. How do we prepare for a world an AI world that's coming sooner than you think?

I've thought about this a lot actually. Um I think that first of all we we should we shouldn't be afraid. Uh a lot of people get things wrong about AI. I mean if you look at 1997 where uh AI first beat a chess grandmaster Kasparov in a in a game of chess. And at that point we were like it's over.

No more chess. It's been beaten. Chess is bigger than ever. There's like twice as many grand masters now than there were 10 years ago. The purses at these massive chess competitions are bigger than ever.

Probably two to three times as big. So, it's like booming even though it was one of the first things that was completely disrupted by AI. Uh Andre Karpathy had a nice thread last week about radiology. Like radiology has never been bigger than it is now. There's still more demand for radiologists than than supply.

wages are going up. And you ask people 10 years ago when AI was was first at or above human performance in these radiology scans, they would have told you don't go to medical school to be a radiologist. That's like uh a bad career move. So I think for a lot of things, the big one right now by the way is software engineering. If I had to make a prediction, I think there would be more software engineers 10 years from now than than there are today.

Of course, they have to be conversant in the AI tools and and if you're not, you'll be at a big disadvantage, but uh I I'm I'm still very bullish on humans and human ingenuity. So, I think the best thing to do is to start tinkering with uh uh with these AI tools. I mean, it's like if I watch my kids and how they use Chad GBT and Grock, um I think that's the future. And the great thing about kids uh versus, you know, old folks like me is they have time. I have existing things to do that are getting in the way of me tinkering with AI.

So, I really have to make an effort. I think that's the best way to do it. I think you should tinker. You should use cursor. You should use windsurf or what have you, claude code.

Uh just build things, create things, and do it for fun. And and I think that's that's the best way to futureproof your uh your career.

Lots to all over. Vatana, thanks so much for your time today. Thank you.

Thank you.