Original Title: Vlad Tenev Wants to Tokenize SpaceX & OpenAI on Robinhood

Original Source: Bankless

Original Translation: kkk, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: On June 30, Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev posted on X, stating that the company would make a major announcement related to its crypto business tonight at 11 p.m. Beijing time. This move aligns perfectly with Robinhood's current comprehensive expansion in the crypto and fintech fields.

As fintech gradually evolves towards "platformization" and "intelligence," Robinhood stands at the intersection of traditional brokerages and the new order of crypto, outlining the possible future form of personal financial services through a series of product line reorganizations.

Robinhood is moving away from its position as a single trading tool and shifting towards a "operating system"-like layout centered around the user's entire life cycle. From the tokenization of private equity, the integration of a CFTC-compliant prediction market, the launch of Cortex and Strategies covering AI strategy advising and option strategy building, to the introduction of "cash delivery" style Robinhood Banking and a multi-chain wallet unified architecture, the pace of its financial blueprint expansion far exceeds the traditional imagination of a FinTech company.

In this in-depth interview with Bankless, Tenev elaborated for the first time on Robinhood's overall vision for expansion into the crypto, AI, private banking services, and private equity openness fields. He emphasized that Robinhood is not the "antithesis of centralization" but is becoming a bridge connecting TradFi and DeFi: providing a more efficient and equitable financial access beyond a banking license model; at the same time, he also responded to the controversy of being "Bankless," pointing out that Robinhood plays a role of a gateway service provider rather than a sovereign issuer in the crypto business.

Today's Robinhood is no longer just an admission ticket for US stock retail investors but is trying to become a shared entry point for crypto-native users, AI wealth management users, and global asset investors.

This interview was published on March 31. The following is the compiled content of the dialogue:

Bankless: Welcome to Bankless, a program dedicated to exploring the forefront of Internet finance. Today, my guest is Robinhood's CEO, Vlad Tenev. As the platform's user base and asset under management continue to grow, Robinhood is accelerating its position as a key player in the cryptocurrency field. In fact, they entered the cryptocurrency race early: not only did they offer cryptocurrency trading in the Robinhood App early on, but they also launched the Robinhood wallet—a true non-custodial crypto wallet.

However, due to the former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) enforcement oversight and hardline stance on the crypto track, Robinhood's further expansion into the crypto space was once paused. Now, that phase has passed, and what I'm curious about is—after finally getting SEC clearance, how will Robinhood advance its crypto product offerings? Coincidentally, just this week I had a conversation with Vlad, Robinhood's CEO, the week the company announced a series of heavyweight product lines, including Robinhood's banking strategy and Cortex. I also took this opportunity to have an in-depth discussion with Vlad about these new business ventures.

However, for me, the most interesting and favorite part of the entire interview was the discussion about "the increasing threshold for private companies to go public in the traditional financial market" and "how this trend intersects with the tokenization movement." Current highly promising companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others are still private enterprises, even though their equity circulates in various ways in the private market, they are not truly public.

Vlad believes that tokenization can play a significant role here—it can not only bring liquidity to these private enterprises but also provide investment opportunities for investors interested in companies on the technological frontier. This innovation is a perfect fit, and if we talk about the most suitable platform to host this tokenized market, Robinhood is naturally the most promising candidate.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this interview with Vlad. Although Robinhood is not yet a fully "unbanked" platform, their continuous challenge to the traditional financial system and pushing for old order reform—all of this is good for the entire industry. So, let's officially start today's program. But before that, let's thank the sponsors who have made this show possible and who have allowed this so-called DeFi "wild west" show to continue. This is why you should check out FRAC's Finance—an avant-garde protocol that is completely reshaping the stablecoin ecosystem.

Welcome to Bankless Nation. Today, we have invited Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood. This is Vlad's third time on the show. Every time he comes, there are always some heavyweight updates about Robinhood. Also, every time Vlad appears, Robinhood further delves into the crypto space. This time is no exception. Vlad, I'm glad you're back, welcome to Bankless once again.

Vlad Tenev: Thank you for the invitation, as always, I'm very pleased to be here.

Bankless: You recently just released a series of major product updates: Robinhood Strategies, Robinhood Banking, and Robinhood Cortex. The timing of our show airing happens to align perfectly with this, although it's purely coincidental. We will discuss these products shortly, but I'd like to start with some topics more aligned with the crypto-native space, especially concerning the new changes in the U.S. domestic crypto regulatory environment.

Under this new administration, the U.S. crypto industry has seen many new opportunities, especially for institutional investors who were previously hesitant due to regulatory uncertainties. With the new administration in place, which specific 'doors' have been opened? What new capabilities does Robinhood have now that were previously unavailable? Which door do you intend to walk through first?

Shift in SEC Regulatory Stance

Vlad Tenev: I think the most direct change is that the U.S. has moved away from what we call an 'enforcement-driven regulatory' approach. Simply put, we no longer have to face constant enforcement actions in every aspect of our business. This shift has brought about significant improvements. For instance, the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) announced the halt of investigations into Robinhood's crypto business, as well as the crypto businesses of several other companies in the industry. At that moment, we felt an immediate sense of relief — we can finally continue to progress as a company, as an industry, without constantly battling that relentless pressure.

The previous administration had a very clear stance on crypto: they simply did not believe crypto should exist, let alone allow it to deeply integrate with the traditional financial system. Therefore, this policy shift is a huge positive development. Additionally, there are two other significant legislative directions being pursued. Of course, I must emphasize: the cessation of 'enforcement-style regulation' itself is a very important turning point.

Another notable development is the clear regulatory stance on Meme coins. You may have also seen that the SEC released a memorandum regarding Meme coins, explicitly stating that such tokens are not securities. This actually isn't very controversial. From a legal analysis perspective, Meme coins do not fit the definition of securities, which is relatively clear. However, in the past, every project had to individually undergo this analysis to determine if it was a security.

Robinhood has always been one of the more compliant companies; we conduct thorough reviews and compliance analyses on every token, including whether they constitute securities. This process is both costly and cumbersome. Therefore, receiving official guidance and exemptions is immensely valuable, significantly reducing the operational burden on us and the entire industry.

Similarly, now there is a clearer definition regarding whether staking constitutes a security. This is a very positive development. Just think about it, the essence of staking is users contributing their computing power resources to support blockchain operations. The presence of staking service providers is to simplify this process.

Overall, this means users can earn higher rewards, meaning more crypto assets flow into their wallets. The previous lack of clear regulation in this area was actually harming American consumers because they could not access their deserved rewards on more regulated platforms.

So, having clear guidance now is a good thing. Currently, in the U.S., there are two important legislative directions in progress: stablecoins and market structure. Stablecoin legislation is expected to come first, which is certainly good news for the entire industry. But what we are truly excited about is the legislation around 'market structure'.

We believe this legislation is key as it will provide a clear path for how we can integrate cryptographic technologies into traditional financial assets in the real world. This includes asset tokenization, interest-bearing stablecoins, and even prediction markets. We will be able to clearly define:

Which assets fall under Crypto Asset Security,

Which fall under Crypto Asset Commodity,

What compliance steps platforms like us need to take to list Crypto Asset Securities,

And what conditions issuers need to meet to offer these assets to the U.S. public.

I believe these are the real key issues, and legislation can help us address them one by one, which is the premise for truly unlocking the potential of cryptographic technology. We are very excited about this.

You mentioned earlier that some companies are exploring using stablecoins to build banking services, meaning users' stablecoins can be staked or placed in a pool to generate returns. I think for the real-world implementation of such innovative products, we need the complement of 'cryptocurrency market structure legislation'. This way, the banking sector will see more competitors.

Currently, the stablecoin legislation has not fully covered these 'interest-bearing stablecoins,' so it cannot provide a solid legal foundation for this model. We indeed need more regulatory clarity to make these products more compliant and safe for the public. But we remain optimistic and are actively engaged in Washington's related legislative work. From the current momentum, the direction is positive, and we are confident about it.

Bankless: From what you're saying, I feel like there are actually many product lines that can be theoretically derived at this stage, but we are still in the exploration or ideation phase. To truly move into the implementation and construction phase, it requires Congress to pass relevant bills as soon as possible. Am I understanding this correctly?

Vlad Tenev: Absolutely. For example, a stablecoin that directly pays interest to holders is essentially very similar to a money market fund. In fact, many stablecoins themselves hold government bonds, so from this perspective, they are not much different from money market funds. There have been some differences in how stablecoins are regulated, but we believe that this is an area that requires regulatory clarity.

Private Equity Tokenization

Bankless: Let's talk about "asset tokenization" in this field. I think this is a particularly hot topic, especially in the traditional financial sector. Because it is essentially a bridge between traditional finance and the crypto world: can we put more assets on the chain to truly leverage the advantages of a public, permissionless blockchain? So, what role does Robinhood play in this trend of tokenization? I guess you are bullish on it. Will you become an issuer? Or a platform? Will Robinhood issue tokenized products itself? Or do you lean more towards being a trading venue for these products? Where do you position yourselves in this tokenization technology stack?

Vlad Tenev: For us, the definition of "asset tokenization" is: mapping a non-native crypto asset on-chain to enable free trading. We actually have some examples of this, such as stablecoins. Stablecoins are essentially tokenized government bond assets. Another interesting example is the tokenized gold product introduced by Paxos. We have also collaborated with Paxos and some other companies to launch USDG, the Dollar Global Network project, aiming to create a stablecoin that is global-facing and offers attractive returns to holders.

Next, the natural progression is tokenized securities, which is a direction we are very excited about. It allows global users to own shares of US companies just like using stablecoins. Just as stablecoin legislation is seen as a tool to drive the global dominance of the US dollar, tokenized securities could also become a key factor in maintaining the dominance of US companies in the global market.

Vlad Tenev: Currently, it is very difficult for foreign investors to invest in US companies. Just as stablecoins have made acquiring dollars simple, tokenized securities can allow global users to easily invest in US equities. This benefits businesses and foreign investors because they can access quality assets as a wealth diversification tool against their depreciating currencies. This is also good for US entrepreneurs and the capital markets. If we can more easily finance companies through the global crypto market, we will see more interesting and promising companies emerge. In fact, a few months ago, we published a column in The Washington Post calling for the promotion of private securities tokenization.

Just think, how difficult it is right now to invest in private companies like OpenAI or SpaceX. Yet, blockchain technology is actually a solution. If we could tokenize shares of private companies, it would be beneficial for both the company and investors. One thing that strikes me as absurd is that we already have a clear regulatory definition for meme coins, and people can freely invest in these projects with no fundamentals, but high-quality private companies like OpenAI and SpaceX are off-limits.

Bankless: Putting all these pieces together, there is already an existing "market" for SpaceX equity, although it currently remains in the realm of private markets. Many individuals have acquired SpaceX shares through various means. Are you suggesting that we could tokenize these shares, using blockchain to make this market more standardized and structured, creating a truly regulated and deep market?

So, in this process, Robinhood could become a platform that provides a trading market. Are you saying that this is one of your roadmaps? And how far away is Robinhood from launching a tokenized product for companies like SpaceX?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, Robinhood is at the intersection of traditional finance and crypto finance. We have all the cryptographic technology while also possessing a full suite of traditional financial infrastructure, including multiple broker-dealer licenses. This is exactly where we can contribute to the ecosystem.

In the future, I think this could potentially operate like the issuance mechanism of an ETF. ETFs essentially hold a basket of securities and then issue ETF shares. This can actually be seen as a precursor to tokenized securities. In the operation of ETFs, investors can exchange a basket of underlying assets for ETFs and can also redeem ETFs back for those assets. This "creation/redemption" mechanism is essentially a parallel model of tokenization logic in traditional finance. And blockchain technology can make this process more efficient and decentralized.

Bankless: We see that even though the number of IPOs has not seen a sharp decline, the overall trend is indeed decreasing. The reason is simple: the cost of IPOs has become too high, making it increasingly difficult for many companies to meet the threshold. Will this also drive the development of the "tokenization of private markets" as a new path? Or is this path too complex and difficult to implement from the perspective of compliance in various countries and traditional financial regulations? How do you see it?

Vlad Tenev: I believe that this trend will drive the "security tokenization" to become an alternative path to IPO. This situation will inevitably happen — even if the U.S. does not pursue it in the short term, other countries will start experimenting. The nature of crypto is global. If you can tokenize a company's shares on the blockchain in a compliant jurisdiction, you can immediately tap into a market with increasingly strong liquidity, a global participant base, and a user base of over a billion. For these reasons, I believe the U.S. will eventually embrace this trend.

This tokenization serves two key purposes:

One is at the early-stage startup level, which is equivalent to a traditional IPO, known as primary market financing. The "main capital" at this stage is crucial. As a founder who has been through the seed stage, I know that fundraising consumes a lot of time and resources and is very challenging for small companies. If you can quickly access a global funding pool to complete fundraising, this is a very attractive option. This will also give rise to more new companies, new projects, and provide investors with early-stage (although riskier) but higher-return potential participation opportunities.

The second is for later-stage private companies, such as OpenAI or SpaceX, where the company founders have raised a significant amount of capital, or may even be planning an IPO. Tokenization may not be very attractive to the founders at this point, but it is very valuable for employees. Many large companies have thousands or even tens of thousands of employees, but employees do not have a clear expectation of IPO or exit liquidity, and there is no predictable channel for liquidity. At this point, they would hope to realize some of their shares and achieve diversified assets. This provides a very strong practical impetus for tokenization.

There are indeed some "employee equity secondary markets" now, such as EquityZen, Forge, etc., which actively contact employees to help them transfer shares. However, the biggest problem with these platforms is that liquidity is fragmented. The platform needs to match buyers and sellers, match supply and demand, making the process inefficient. The advantage of crypto lies in interoperability. Once you put assets on-chain and turn them into freely tradable tokens, you can immediately access global liquidity. This is where tokenization as a technological solution shines the most.

Bankless: Indeed, many trends are currently driving in this direction. Star companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, which are private, clearly have no interest in going public. Many AI startups are like this — they do not have publicly traded equity and are not as massive as Meta or Google, where stock purchases come with equity dilution issues, making it difficult for investors to truly bet on the AI track.

Vlad Tenev: For the average investor, the investment options to bet on AI are very limited. You may only be able to buy NVIDIA (but it's already a trillion-dollar company), Alphabet (also in the trillion-dollar club), and Tesla. Of course, they are all too large and have already reflected most of the AI premium. But you can't invest in true core AI startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Perplexity.

Bankless: That's right. Just looking at the current public market trend makes it clear—new investment opportunities are increasingly not appearing in the public markets but are concentrated in the private markets. Part of the reason for this, as I mentioned earlier, is because the compliance costs of IPOs are getting higher and the barriers to entry are becoming harder to overcome. At the same time, crypto is providing a potential solution. I see many favorable winds driving this trend towards its conclusion: the tokenization of private market equity, which may eventually evolve into some form of a "quasi-public market."

Alright, I also want to talk about the prediction markets because I remember Robinhood recently ventured into this area. Wasn't there a slogan like "Everything is Marketizable" at some point? Or am I mistaken? Is this your official strategic direction? Or is it just an external impression? Could you help me clarify this?

Robinhood Enters the Prediction Market

Vlad Tenev: Actually, Robinhood has not officially used the slogan "Everything is Marketizable."

Bankless: So, that was indeed my imagination.

Vlad Tenev: However, our parent company is called Robinhood Markets. You may have heard our mission slogan: to democratize finance for all. This means that we believe in the power of markets, and if a market exists, we believe it should be facilitated and made accessible for traders to participate. Especially those markets that were originally only open to institutions, if retail investors are interested, then we believe retail investors should also be able to participate in a fair environment. This is actually one of our goals on the path of "building markets," and this certainly applies to prediction markets as well.

And personally, I think prediction markets have an additional social value: they are not just a trading venue, but they can also provide more accurate event prediction. We have already seen this in the presidential election—while mainstream media was still on the fence, prediction markets had given directional judgments hours or even days in advance. I believe that in the future, we will see this trend in more areas. So I think prediction markets are a "truth machine"; they are an evolution of traditional news—sometimes even able to "see the news" before events occur, which is very interesting.

Bankless: At that time, I, like many others, hosted a presidential election watch party. The TV was tuned to mainstream media, but most of my friends were in the crypto space, so we had not only mainstream media playing but also a dedicated Polymarket page on the screen. As a result, we kept switching between mainstream media and Polymarket to view the data—and Polymarket gave us a more "real-time," closer-to-the-truth feeling.

Recently, Robinhood also made a move into the prediction market space. Let me read a press release to introduce this topic: Robinhood recently launched a prediction market section within its app, allowing users to trade on the outcomes of global major events. At launch, available contracts for trading included "Upper limit on the May Federal Funds Rate" and contracts related to the "Men's and Women's NCAA College Basketball Championship." These seem to be two completely different types of markets. So, the first question I already know the answer to—what was the intention behind launching the prediction market. But more importantly, this product is supported by Kalshi. Could you explain Kalshi's role in this collaboration?

Vlad Tenev: Sure, Kalshi is a DCM (Designated Contract Market), and its role is similar to that of an exchange in the stock market. For example, in the stock market, we have NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. Robinhood, as a broker, connects to these exchanges or market makers to match buyers and sellers, and the trade matching is done on the exchange. In the stock realm, Robinhood is a broker, and we have introducing brokers and clearing brokers. We send orders to exchanges or market makers. In the futures market, regulated by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), DCMs play the role of exchanges. In the prediction market, where Robinhood's role is that of an FCM (Futures Commission Merchant), we interact with customers, provide the interface and order channels, and then route orders to DCMs for matching.

You can think of Kalshi as NASDAQ, while we are a traditional broker. For the presidential election-related contracts, we are connected to another DCM called ForecastEx, which is a subsidiary of Interactive Brokers. We can actually connect to multiple DCMs to provide users with access to different contracts. However, all prediction market contracts we offer must be officially listed by a DCM before we can go live.

Bankless: So, you mean Robinhood itself cannot launch its own prediction market and can only integrate through a third-party DCM, right?

Vlad Tenev: That's right. As you mentioned before, Polymarket, one of the main reasons it cannot operate compliantly in the U.S. is because it is not a DCM. They have opted for a completely decentralized, cryptographically based way of running a prediction market. But this is precisely one of the issues that the market structure legislation we discussed earlier aims to address: Who should oversee prediction markets like Polymarket in the U.S. regulatory system? Should they be managed according to the CFTC's commodity contract model? Or should there be a new regulatory framework specifically to handle the "crypto version" of prediction markets? Currently, these questions do not have clear answers. Only after the legislation advances, will these markets be able to legally operate in the U.S.

Bankless: I think our podcast listeners will definitely want to be able to legally use Polymarket in the U.S. as well. So, the final question about prediction markets: Currently, Robinhood has launched prediction markets for the "Federal Funds Rate" and "College Basketball Games." What are the next new prediction-based trading products? Can you reveal Robinhood's next steps?

Vlad Tenev: With our latest set of prediction market contracts going live, we have upgraded from being able to launch only one contract at a time to being able to launch hundreds simultaneously. This involves the complexity of operations such as clearing, settlement, and dependencies among contract structures, especially series contracts like men's and women's NCAA basketball games, which have greatly strengthened our system. Next, we will soon have the ability to launch thousands of contracts at once, completely unlocking the diversity and potential of prediction markets.

We are excited about many areas, especially the development of artificial intelligence. Some prediction markets around AI technology progress are very interesting and can indeed provide insights, which our users are very interested in. But more importantly, I believe prediction markets should become a "newspaper of the future". For example, it should include a "front-page news" section (what everyone is most concerned about right now), as well as "sports", "business", "entertainment and lifestyle" sections. Prediction markets can become a microcosm of this information—a news form based on real trading intentions.

Bankless: Yes, "Prediction markets as truth engines," I think that's why many crypto users are so fascinated by it. A typical example was the conflict between Israel and Iran, where when missiles started crossing borders, the prediction market on Polymarket provided very cutting-edge, real information. These events not only involve sensitive geopolitical issues but are also very high-risk, high-impact events. We are entering an increasingly turbulent global situation, and naturally, ordinary people would want to better understand the probability of these possibilities occurring. How do you see Robinhood integrating these global macro, geopolitical-related prediction markets in the future?

Vlad Tenev: I believe that this is valuable for society as a whole. Currently, the CFTC has some guidance on "event contracts" (meaning prediction markets), such as clearly stating: "Prediction markets that are not in the public interest should not be listed for trading." However, this "contrary to public interest" concept is actually quite vague and broad. I think we should try to make this restriction more specific because I believe that the vast majority of prediction markets are inherently in the public interest.

Three Product Lines

Robinhood Banking Product Line

Bankless: Back to the Robinhood theme. You recently held a large-scale event, similar to Robinhood's summit, introducing three major new product lines: Robinhood Strategies, Robinhood Banking, and Robinhood Cortex. Let's talk about them one by one, starting with the one I am most interested in: Robinhood Banking. What is the motivation behind this product? How did you initially envision it?

Vlad Tenev: The core idea behind this Gold event is: we want to provide all users with the same resources and services as high-net-worth individuals. High-net-worth clients typically have private banking advisors, investment advisors, research teams that can help clients find opportunities globally (whether in the public markets or private markets). Technology now allows us to provide this "family office-level service" to regular users at very low cost. This is exactly the direction we want to take—putting a high-net-worth family's financial team in each user's pocket, and for just $5 a month, Gold members can enjoy this service. What we want to do is not just provide financial services but use technology to create an "iPhone-like financial product"—an accessible and proud-worthy high-end product for everyone.

So, the three products we launched at this Gold event are actually part of a complete storyline logic: Strategies are your digital investment advisor; Cortex is your intelligent research assistant; and Robinhood Banking is your private banker. This is also Robinhood's first AI product launch. In the future, you will see more and more cutting-edge inference models, intelligent models gradually being integrated into the product experience, achieving deep linkage between products, truly achieving

"Information Interconnectedness," bringing an intelligent financial service experience.

Robinhood Cortex Product Line

Bankless: When I was reading the announcement and saw Robinhood Cortex, I initially thought you were launching an AI agent. Later, upon a closer read, I understood more. Can you give an example of how users actually use Cortex? I assume you have integrated it into Robinhood's mobile app, so is it like a finance-specific ChatGPT? Could you elaborate on what kind of product it is?

Vlad Tenev: Currently, within the Robinhood app, Cortex has two main use cases: The first is to answer "what is happening with a particular stock right now." We often send users push notifications, such as when a stock has surged or dropped by more than 5%. Many users then click to see what is going on with that stock. Cortex will explain on the stock's detail page the reasons driving the current price fluctuation, providing a clear explanation as much as possible.

The second one is about options trading. Options are very complex for most people, especially when it involves multi-leg strategy combinations that require a lot of professional judgment. Cortex, through the Trade Builder feature, can automatically build a suitable options strategy combination based on your prediction of a particular stock's future trend, making the whole experience quite magical. We demonstrated this during the Gold event: users select a stock, input their prediction, and the system then generates options strategies ready to trade, or enters our new feature—Parallel Options Chain View, making it easy to execute multiple options trades on a single screen, very efficient.

Bankless: It sounds like this process: you express your trading intent in natural language, AI processes it and provides several suggested options combinations. Is it essentially translating human language into strategy execution suggestions? Is that the logic?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, but we don't just make matches based on your language input. We also integrate various external data, such as real-time market data, technical indicators, news information, etc., to help you better form the prediction itself. In other words, we not only provide strategies based on your existing prediction but also assist you in making more accurate predictions.

Bankless: Can you talk about the underlying structure of this LLM (Large Language Model)? I assume you didn't just slap a ChatGPT shell on it, right? Does its data, training method have any special features that make it a true Robinhood-centric financial AI?

Vlad Tenev: That's correct. Most general LLMs do not have real-time financial data; their data is often lagging. Therefore, they cannot tell you the price of a stock "right now," let alone provide an accurate explanation for fluctuations. What's even more serious is that they are prone to illusions in the financial field due to a lack of accurate data support. The AI layer we developed addresses both the illusion problem and the real-time data issue, which are the two major shortcomings of traditional LLMs.

Bankless: Indeed, if AI in the financial field experiences illusions, the consequences could be disastrous.

Vlad Tenev: Absolutely. But the benefit of finance is that we have a "source of truth" for data. Unlike writing a history paper where illusions are hard to clear up, financial data has clear standards. We can establish a "fence" to accurately identify illusions and make corrections.

Bankless: And this may be the core competitive advantage of Robinhood as a financial AI assistant: you not only have real-time market data but also user behavioral data and all the data context in financial scenarios.

Vlad Tenev: Yes, that is a significant advantage. Another point is that we can also execute trading operations within the app. If we can make Cortex "context-aware" of users' behavioral scenarios, it will become more valuable. We don't want to just put a chatbox in the app; that kind of thing is hard to use, produces lengthy output, and is prone to illusions. That is a very naive approach, and we deliberately avoid going down that path.

Robinhood Strategies Product Line

Bankless: Let's talk about Strategies again: Are you considering expanding this product to include cryptocurrency assets in the future? Because all friends in the crypto space will be asked by people around them, "How do I buy coins?" and "How should I allocate"—but everyone actually doesn't know how to answer. If Strategies could provide intelligent allocation advice for cryptocurrency assets, wouldn't that be particularly valuable? How do you plan to expand into this area?

Vlad Tenev: Technically, there are no issues at all. We have a long list of features in hand, perhaps dozens or even hundreds of features under consideration. Our main focus for now is to see what users want the most. We chose to start with individual stocks because most digital investment advisory platforms only support ETFs, while our core supports both individual stocks and ETFs in a portfolio. Additionally, we have designed a beautiful interface, such as a pie chart showing your asset allocation and the ability to automatically rebalance for an "almost hands-off investment experience." As for crypto assets, we actually considered adding them at the launch stage, and they will definitely be gradually integrated in the future. We are now live, and users can experience it directly. The feedback has been very positive, with many people starting to migrate their investment portfolios.

Moreover, our Strategies have a major differentiating advantage: we have completely disrupted the traditional advisory platform fee structure. Traditional advisors typically charge a fee based on a percentage of managed assets. Traditional advisors usually charge around 1%, and even the cheapest robo-advisor charges 0.25%. This brings up an issue: the more you invest, the fees increase linearly, but the service does not improve proportionally. For example, a robo-advisor managing one million dollars is not ten times more complex than managing one hundred thousand dollars, but you have to pay ten times more in fees. This makes high net-worth users increasingly dissatisfied. In contrast, our strategy products have a fee cap: we only charge a maximum of $250. Regardless of your asset size, the fee no longer continues to increase. As a result, the more assets a person has, the more cost-effective it is to use Robinhood Strategies, and they will also be more satisfied.

Bankless: Your Strategies have a fee cap of $250, rather than charging based on AUM (Assets Under Management). Does this mean that Robinhood is more inclined to see this product as a "user-growth-driven" business? How does Robinhood benefit from the significant growth of Strategies?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, this fee structure is actually a significant incentive—it will attract users with a large amount of external assets to transfer funds to the Robinhood platform. Robinhood can benefit in the following ways: asset management fees, Robinhood Gold subscription fees.

Furthermore, we have observed that once users become Gold members and transfer a significant portion of their funds, for example, $1000, they will truly start to feel the value of this platform and are more likely to use more of our services, such as credit cards, self-directed trading, and so on. This is the goal we hope to achieve—to "migrate" a user's entire financial relationship to Robinhood, allowing you to conveniently manage all funds. With the increase in the total funds on the platform, our revenue will also grow accordingly.

Cash Delivery Service

Bankless: Got it. I also wanted to ask about your new product—the Cash Delivery Service. My reaction when I saw this feature was: Is this the "Uber Eats" of the cash world? Why did you decide to do this? How does it work?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, we have indeed ventured into the "logistics business," which is quite intriguing to me personally. First and foremost, this is a high-end private banking service. Robinhood does not have physical branches, so we asked ourselves: How can we provide an uncompromised digital banking experience to customers without branches? Although cash usage is on the decline, it still accounts for 16% of all payments in the U.S., and many people still need cash. However, if you are using a purely digital bank, you can only withdraw cash at 7-11 or CVS. Obviously, the idea of "going to a convenience store to withdraw cash" is completely contrary to the "private banking experience."

We asked ourselves, can we reverse this—let the bank provide "doorstep service"? Today's logistics platforms are very mature; you can get a delivery in 15 minutes, even an iPhone can be delivered directly to you. So, what we want to do is take this model and apply it to cash services.

Of course, we will not build the entire logistics system ourselves but rather collaborate with professional partners, and we will announce this partnership soon. Although complex, we believe this will bring tremendous value. I used to be a First Republic customer, and they offered a "cash delivery" service (although they used armored trucks to transport large amounts of cash). We are thinking about how to standardize this "wealthy-exclusive service" sufficiently so that more people can afford it.

Bankless: I assume the minimum withdrawal amount you have set is not something like $100, right?

Vlad Tenev: During the demo, we set the minimum at $200 for delivery. But we are still in the exploratory phase, and specifics such as the minimum amount, user behavior, average withdrawal amount, etc., will depend on user feedback after the launch. However, we anticipate that the average amount might fall within the range of a few hundred dollars.

Robinhood's Next Stop: Product Matrix and Ecosystem Layout

Bankless: Returning to the topic of crypto. Robinhood currently has a limited number of crypto assets. Do you have any plans to expand to more coins?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, since the improvement of the regulatory environment, we have actually listed quite a few assets, such as Trump Coin. We listed it on the day of the presidential inauguration, and it was very popular. Now, there are thousands of new coins being created every week. We have also realized the need to rethink our asset listing strategy. You should expect to see the Robinhood Wallet (our on-chain wallet product) — currently somewhat detached from the main app — becoming more integrated with the main app in the future.

You will see: the main app gaining more on-chain features; smoother withdrawals and deposits in the Wallet; a gradual integration between Custody and DeFi products. As the industry matures, our strategy will shift from "carefully selecting assets for listing" to "efficient optimization based on demand from the backend," allowing customers to choose for themselves. However, we must also establish filtering mechanisms to prevent speculative bubbles and avoid allowing users to casually access high-risk junk coins in situations of information asymmetry.

Bankless: So now you have the Robinhood Wallet, the main Robinhood App, and the Robinhood credit card, which is Robinhood Banking, right?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, the Robinhood credit card has now been integrated into Robinhood Banking.

Bankless: Is the division of labor among these three apps mainly due to compliance/regulatory considerations? Do you have any thoughts on integrating them into a "super financial app"?

Vlad Tenev: Initially, we did want to create an "all-in-one app," but the issue was that the design of the home page became too crucial. Active traders and users utilizing credit card/banking features have completely different expectations for the home page. And indeed, most users mentally separate the "trading interface" from the "banking interface."

So, I am open-minded about integration. We can try to build a super app, but I am not fixated on the idea of "must merge." What's more important is: unified KYC; seamless fund flow between accounts. Apart from that, let the best interface win. Our main app may add more features, and we do not rule out continuing to have different teams create independent apps, or even something like the relationship between Uber and Uber Eats, on-again, off-again.

Bankless: Lastly, I want to talk about being Bankless. You know our show is called Bankless, advocating for "banklessness," emphasizing asset self-custody and self-sovereignty. However, Robinhood has many features that actually sound quite "bank-like," such as your plan to launch banking products. Crypto has indeed challenged traditional finance, with banks like Wells Fargo offering only a 0.25% savings interest rate and lacking innovation. But Robinhood does provide a more premium option, yet you are not entirely "Bankless." So I wanted to ask:

Vlad Tenev: "How Bankless am I really?" Right?

Bankless: Right, how Bankless are you really? Which direction will Robinhood take in the future?

Vlad Tenev: Actually, we are quite literally Bankless right now; we do not have a banking license. Sometimes people ask me, "Are you going to apply for a banking license?" because we are often compared to traditional financial companies with banking licenses. Having a license has its advantages, such as direct access to systems like FedWire and Zelle, the ability to issue loans, and conduct clearing and settlement activities.

But our current strategy is to act as a neutral platform and collaborate with banks. For example, in our credit card business, our partner bank is Coastal Community Bank, and other partner banks participate in our cash management program. In fact, many DeFi projects fundamentally need a banking interface because as long as you want to convert fiat money into on-chain assets, the bank is part of the chain.

I believe we will see more "crypto banks" in the future—holding certain licenses, subject to regulation, but not as burdened as traditional banks. These banks can manage liquidity pools, reserves, and other critical processes, avoiding past collapse events like Terra Luna, Anchor, Celsius, and other projects that "look like banks but do not have real rules." I have always been a market advocate; I believe in free competition and fair regulation. These two worlds—traditional banking and cryptographic technology—will ultimately blend rather than separate.

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