SINGAPORE — Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says the most important topic in the cryptocurrency industry right now is tokenization, a move that is rapidly approaching disruption of traditional finance.
Tenev told the audience at the Token2049 conference in Singapore that tokenization is a “freight train” hurtling towards the heart of traditional finance.
“Cryptocurrency and traditional finance have lived in separate worlds, but they will completely merge. In the future, everything will be on-chain in some form and there will be no distinction,” he said.
Robinhood currently offers tokenized stocks in Europe as well as private equity in hot private startups like OpenAI, so the company is betting big on a future where assets are traded on-chain, 24/7, around the world.
“Just as stablecoins have become the default way to digitally access dollars, the default way for people outside the US to access US stocks will be tokenized stocks,” Tenev said on stage. “That’s why we launched equity tokens in Europe first. This is the future of how global investors will hold U.S. assets.”
Despite many in the cryptocurrency industry praising the direction of U.S. digital asset policy, Tenev said the country needs to catch up with Europe on the regulatory front.
The current system already works well enough that there is no urgent need for changes, such as creating regulations to facilitate 24/7 trading of tokenized stocks. Tenev compared that to the lack of high-speed rail in the United States, which exists everywhere in Europe and Asia.
“The biggest challenge in the United States is that our financial system is basically functioning. That’s why we don’t have bullet trains. Medium-speed trains are sufficient,” he said. “Therefore, the gradual move towards full tokenization will take more time.”
Real estate tokenization
Robinhood’s next move is tokenizing real estate.
Tenev told the audience that asset tokenization is “mechanically” no different than that of private companies such as SpaceX or OpenAI: you place assets into a corporate structure and issue tokens for them.
While OpenAI called the move to tokenize its private equity “unauthorized,” and crypto lawyers who spoke to CoinDesk said the move was a legal tightrope walk, Tenev dismissed the controversy as part of broader regulatory delays, arguing that the main hurdles are legal, not technical.
He said Europe is already moving forward and the U.S. is likely to follow suit, but he envisioned real estate as the next logical step in Robinhood’s tokenization push, an asset class that could one day be as easily traded as stocks and stablecoins.
“It will ultimately undermine the entire financial system,” Tenev said.