Vlad Tenev sees a different future for money and markets. The Robinhood chairman and chief executive has spent years steering the brokerage toward crypto. Now he argues tokenization will upend how assets trade worldwide. Stocks. Real estate. Private shares. All moving on blockchain rails around the clock.
Robinhood teased the next phase this week. Its X account posted a simple message. “A new era of crypto is on the horizon.” The date read 7.1.26. The link led to robinhood.com/presents and an event billed as “The World is Flat” at London’s Old Royal Naval College. Tenev will present products meant to reshape the map of finance. The imagery evokes explorers flattening old assumptions. So does the strategy.
Yahoo Finance reported the teaser alongside Robinhood’s recent acquisition of WonderFi Technologies. The deal, worth about C$250 million, brings more than one million customers outside the U.S. Tenev told CNBC the move advances the goal “to make Robinhood the leading global financial platform.” Stablecoins figure prominently in that vision. They could enable native yield on USDC and USDT. They could ease cross-border transfers of both crypto and stocks. Robinhood’s holdings of Treasury bills provide backing.
Regulatory tailwinds help. The CLARITY Act heads toward a floor vote. It promises clearer rules distinguishing securities from commodities. Tenev has said the U.S. stands “very close” to passage. Such clarity would remove obstacles that have slowed domestic innovation.
Yet Tenev refuses to tie the company’s fate to Bitcoin’s price. During the first-quarter 2026 earnings call, crypto trading activity dropped 30 percent. It accounted for just 12.5 percent of revenue, down sharply from prior peaks. Banking and prediction markets offset the decline. Revenue held steady. Tenev used the moment to pivot. “We’re at the very beginning of what will be a tokenization supercycle,” he said, according to Fortune. The focus shifts to blockchain infrastructure adopted by traditional finance.
Robinhood has already moved. In Europe it offers tokenized versions of more than 1,500 public stocks, up from roughly 400 months earlier. These nonvoting derivatives track U.S. equities and ETFs. They trade commission-free nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week. Private names such as SpaceX and OpenAI appear too. The experiment tests what Robinhood would look like rebuilt on crypto rails. “The experiment that we’re running in Europe is, What would Robinhood look like if it was rebuilt from the ground up entirely on crypto rails?” Tenev told Forbes. “Then we’ll see what the pros and cons are and bring the best of that EU app to the U.S. and the rest of the world.”
Bitstamp fits the plan. Robinhood bought the Luxembourg exchange for $200 million. The deal unlocks perpetual futures on bitcoin and ether for European customers. Staking arrives for U.S. users. Robinhood develops its own blockchain, starting with a test version on Arbitrum technology. The company envisions self-custody, collateralized lending and DeFi connections. Tokenized assets could trade 24/7. Liquidity improves. Settlement happens in minutes instead of days.
Tenev speaks in sweeping terms. “Tokenization is going to eat the entire financial system,” he said at an industry event, as relayed by CoinDesk. He compares it to stablecoins becoming the default digital access to dollars. Tokenized stocks, he predicts, will do the same for global investors seeking U.S. equities. Real-estate tokenization follows the same mechanics used for private companies. Put assets in a legal wrapper. Issue tokens. Trade them freely.
But. Challenges remain. Brokers resist easy data pulls. Legacy systems depend on slow settlement. Some fear decoupling risks if tokens and underlying shares diverge. Tenev calls these “edge cases.” Regulation can fix them. The wrapped token model Robinhood favors avoids forcing companies to issue separate share tranches. Liquidity stays intact.
Robinhood’s own numbers tell a story of ambition. Assets under custody reached $255 billion. The firm added funded accounts rapidly. Ten business lines target more than $100 million in revenue each within two years. Gold subscription products deliver steady income through yields, margin and matches. Crypto revenue hit records in stronger periods before the recent slump. The stock itself soared on earlier optimism. Market cap once approached $100 billion.
And yet markets cooled. Bitcoin slid. Crypto volumes fell across the industry. Robinhood shares reacted. Analysts looked past the earnings miss. Early data showed strong equity and options activity. Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest bought shares. Prediction markets provided a lift in other quarters.
Tenev frames three arcs. Win active traders. Serve full customer wallets. Build the top global financial platform. The third arc dwarfs the first two. Opportunities compound slowly then accelerate. “This will be much larger than the first two arcs,” he said in the Forbes profile. He once wondered about placing stocks on blockchains. The GameStop episode highlighted flaws in traditional infrastructure. Settlement delays. Opacity. High costs for some participants.
Europe serves as the laboratory. MiCA rules there already provide structure still debated in Washington. Robinhood expands across 30 EU and EEA countries. It integrates tokenized assets with Bitstamp for continuous trading. The company hosts events with theatrical flair. “Robinhood Presents: The World is Flat.” Previous sessions covered AI, prediction markets and token launches. Each reveals incremental progress. Each signals bigger intent.
Critics question timing. Crypto winters test patience. Private company tokens drew pushback. OpenAI distanced itself from one effort. Technical hurdles persist. Building a blockchain demands engineering talent and capital. Interoperability across networks adds complexity. Retail investors must grasp self-custody risks. Security breaches elsewhere in crypto linger in memory.
Still Tenev pushes. He believes crypto exceeds speculation. It can form the backbone of global finance. “We as an industry find ourselves at an important precipice,” he told Forbes. “We have a chance to prove to the world what we’ve believed all along, that crypto is much more than a speculative asset. It has the potential to become the backbone of the global financial system. We are hoping to turn that from a possibility to an inevitability.”
Recent moves reinforce the message. The WonderFi deal accelerates international growth. Tokenized stock counts keep rising. Blockchain testnets advance. Stablecoin ideas gain traction as U.S. rules near clarity. July 1 approaches. London awaits. Tenev will step on stage. The products he unveils could accelerate the supercycle he predicts. Or they could face the same volatility that has marked every prior crypto wave.
Either way the bet is placed. Robinhood no longer acts as a simple brokerage app. It positions itself at the intersection of traditional assets and blockchain rails. Tenev, the onetime math prodigy who built a commission-free trading empire, now chases a flatter world. One where borders matter less. Where settlement never sleeps. Where anyone with a smartphone holds pieces of companies once reserved for institutions.
The map is changing. Robinhood intends to draw the new lines.
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