Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says sectors like art and real estate could be tokenized and made available on blockchain.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev described tokenization as a significant advancement in capital markets, enabling both public and private assets to be traded around the clock on blockchain technology. At a recent company event, Robinhood introduced stock tokens for over 200 public companies and private firms such as OpenAI and SpaceX, marking what Tenev said were the first public blockchain-issued stock tokens for these companies.

Tenev explained that these tokens are backed one-for-one by underlying assets, aiming to provide real exposure rather than speculative betting. He noted that tokenization could extend to traditionally illiquid assets like art and real estate. Addressing regulatory scrutiny, particularly from EU authorities, Tenev emphasized the transparency and asset backing of these offerings.

Robinhood CEO: Tokenization is a major innovation in capital markets

I think tokenization is perhaps the biggest innovation in capital markets since the central limit order book. So what it allows is for any asset, public or private, liquid or illiquid, to be put on crypto technology and be tradable round-the-clock. And at our event to catch a token in the south of France last week, we unveiled a few features that I think were extremely meaningful not just for our EU customers but for the industry. One is stock tokens of over 200 public names including, you know, all the popular ones like Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla and so forth. We also did a giveaway of private stock tokens as you mentioned OpenAI and SpaceX. And I believe those were the first stock tokens of those companies issued on a public blockchain. If this operates like a derivative, right, how do you actually adhere to any kind of value? Because companies like OpenAI, they don't disclose everything publicly about what goes on with their finances. Yeah, so the way these work is the company obtains exposure to an underlying asset. In the case of private stock tokens, we do make every effort to make sure that the exposure that we offer to customers is backed one-for-one. And, you know, I believe that this can be scalable to many private companies. Many have reached out expressing interest to be to be part of the tokenization revolution. It could also be extended to many types of assets. You can imagine art, real estate, all kinds of illiquid names can be tokenized in this form and made available to investors on-chain. And Vlad, once again, I'm not disputing that maybe this is a revolutionary platform that a lot of investors want to get involved in, but it is basically betting. And to that point, EU regulation, you know, they've already stepped in. Lithuania, who happens to be your EU regulator, has asked for clarification, right? What are you telling them? Well, first of all, I think it's very, very different from betting. This is real exposure and the assets backing this are exposure to the underlying private companies. Now, it is a little tricky because OpenAI in particular, non-profit, the equity or equity-like instruments that they're distributing to institutional investors are also complex. That said, having exposure to retail to the transformative companies of our era, particularly companies dealing with frontier technologies like artificial intelligence, I think is extremely important.

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