According to the CEO of Robinhood, Vladimir Tenev, what is happening to crypto is showing how powerful tokenization is.
He said it yesterday during an interview given to Bloomberg, in which he spoke extensively about cryptocurrencies, as well as traditional markets, regulation, AI, and other things.
The interview with the CEO of Robinhood: crypto as a superpower of tokenization
The interview lasted less than a quarter of an hour, but Tenev had the opportunity to answer many questions on different topics.
However, since he was interviewed by Sonali Basak and Tim Stenovec within the “Bloomberg Crypto” segment, it is obvious that the focus was on cryptocurrencies.
In addition to crypto, he specifically talked about the current stock price, regulation, and the fact that retail investors who want to enter AI at this moment find themselves in a difficult situation.
Regarding crypto, he said that the process of creating a token is now so easy and quick that it clearly demonstrates how easy it could be to tokenize even the shares of large private companies like OpenAI and SpaceX.
He said:
“You can sit in front of a software, create a coin and have it trade in 5 minutes”.
Then he added:
“It’s a frightening thing.”
He emphasized how this procedure, so easy and quick, is incredibly powerful when compared to how cumbersome the process is to reach an IPO (the placement of a new stock on the market).
The CEO of Robinhood finds tokenization very interesting because of the ease with which blockchain technology can list assets and tap into global liquidity.
Robinhood, the crypto and the power of tokenization
Robinhood is a famous app for trading, originally created for traditional markets but now completely open to crypto markets. In fact, during crypto bull runs, it is these new assets that attract the most attention on their platform.
Although it is not a full-fledged crypto exchange, it allows trading of numerous cryptocurrencies.
For years now, it has opened up to the crypto markets, and this has made cryptocurrencies one of the most successful assets on their platform.
The fact is that thanks to their app, it is possible with a single platform to easily trade on different assets, that is, for example, simultaneously on stocks and crypto, even though regarding cryptocurrencies, the services offered are more limited than those of true crypto exchanges.
Tokenization
By tokenizzazione, we mean the creation and launch on financial markets of tokens that represent real-world assets (RWA, Real World Asset).
For example, gold-collateralized stablecoins, already present for some time in the crypto markets, are in all respects tokenized gold, and gold is in all respects a Real World Asset.
However, this does not apply only to physical goods, such as metals or real estate, but also to intangible goods, such as stocks, bonds, or other similar assets.
In reality, stocks have already been tokenized, but the trading of tokenized stocks has never really taken off. The reason is most likely due to the fact that trading real stocks is very easy to do, and it is done on markets much more liquid than crypto ones.
However, as Tenev pointed out, this applies only to companies that manage to go public, which is a tiny percentage of the companies existing in the world. For all those that do not manage to land on the stock market with an IPO, an alternative could be the tokenization of their shares, which nowadays from a technical point of view would be easy, fast, and economical.
However, the problem of ensuring that each token corresponds to what is promised (such as a share, or a part of a share) always remains, because there is no way to ensure 100% in a trustless manner that this is always verified.
Robinhood on the Stock Exchange: $HOOD
The company went public in 2021, during a full bull run.
After the first month on the rise, however, their stock began a long and painful descent, lasting almost a year, which brought the price from the initial $38 to less than $7. The all-time high recorded in August 2021 was even over $85.
After that crash, however, the stock moved sideways for almost a year and a half, then bounced back starting in December 2023.
The year 2023 was a substantially good year, although not excellent, because it did not even manage to recover the initial price of $38. However, with the Trump trade of November 2024, the Robinhood stock on the market made a great leap that not only ended up bringing it back above $38, but also allowed it to reach $67 on February 13.
Since then it has corrected a bit, but the current price of $46 is still significantly higher than the initial one less than four years ago.