Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev predicts that stocks and other traditional financial assets (TradFi) will eventually move up the chain like cryptocurrencies.
In a new interview with investor Anthony Pompliano, Tenev say that the efficiencies achieved through the use of blockchain technology make its adoption by the traditional financial world inevitable.
He also predicts that newly elected US President Donald Trump and his administration will implement policies that will accelerate the move to on-chain stocks, private companies and real-world assets (RWAs) by tokenizing them.
“What will happen is traditional stocks – and I think this will all be accelerated by the new ones [Trump] administration – will move to blockchain rails, along with all kinds of other real assets. You’ll also see private companies getting on blockchain rails. Once you have publicly traded companies, you have to think about what it means to actually go public and list on a blockchain, as opposed to a traditional stock exchange. I think we have to figure that out, and then that also opens up the private markets. And what you gain is interoperability.
I don’t know if you’ve tried moving shares from an old discount broker to Robinhood. A lot of people do it, and it’s very painful. And besides, the big real estate agencies don’t want to make it easy for you. They want to keep those assets there, so they will also put all kinds of non-technical barriers in the way. But when you compare that to how easy it is to move stable dollar coins or Bitcoin from your MetaMask wallet to your Phantom or Robinhood wallet, everything just works, because the infrastructure underlying the assets and the transactions are all public is.
Tenev believes that on-chain transactions are the logical next step in the evolution of TradFi processes, as it would simplify them.
“You don’t need transfer agents, central clearing houses or payment processors. That has all been replaced by software. My view on crypto is that it is kind of the next step in the way the financial infrastructure evolves. It started with pen and paper and a filing cabinet. It went to the mainframe. It went to on-premise and cloud. And then crypto is just the next layer where you’ll see traditional financial services on crypto rails. They will be easier to use, better and more interoperable, and I think the US will have to adopt it. The efficiency gains will simply be too great to ignore.”
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Featured image: Shutterstock/Tithi Luadthong