Crypto shows how powerful tokenizing private stocks would be — Robinhood CEO

The process of making a cryptocurrency that can start trading in minutes shows how easy it would be to tokenize stocks in private big-name firms such as OpenAI and SpaceX, says Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev.

“You can sit down in front of some software, create a coin and have it be trading in 5 minutes […] That’s a scary thing,” Tenev said in a Feb. 25 interview with Bloomberg. “It’s also an incredibly powerful thing if you juxtapose it with how cumbersome the IPO process is.”

“That’s why I think tokenization is so interesting,” he added, pointing to the ease at which blockchain tech can list assets and tap into global liquidity.

Tenev said one of the biggest pain points for Robinhood’s retail investor base has been that they can’t capitalize on perhaps the “biggest technological revolution that we’ve ever seen” — artificial intelligence.

“What can you invest in? Nvidia and to some degree, Tesla, but no OpenAI, no Anthropic,” Tenev said.

He added the Trump administration’s push to make America a world leader in crypto and AI will better position US companies like Robinhood to push the boundaries of the two technologies.

Bringing these real-world assets onchain would require accreditation and registration rules to provide clarity on how trading platforms can list crypto-based securities, Tenev noted.

Disclosure requirements would be necessary too, Tenev said, noting that investors should be able to “delineate between a company like SpaceX that perhaps has high quality audited financials and something that’s earlier stage.”

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Tenev’s plans to experiment more with crypto comes as the US securities regulator closed its investigation into Robinhood Crypto on Feb. 24

The Securities and Exchange Commission, under former Chair Gary Gensler, issued a Wells notice to Robinhood Crypto in May, saying it intended to file an enforcement action over alleged securities violations.

Robinhood posted a record $1 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of last year, with cryptocurrency revenue accounting for $358 million of the total. 

Crypto trading volumes increased over 450% year-over-year to $71 billion, while Robinhood’s total crypto assets under custody increased 75% quarter-on-quarter to $35 million.

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