Robinhood CEO: Tokenization Will Enable 24/7 Trading and “Take Over the Entire Financial System”

Thomas Richmond

Wed, August 19, 2026 at 10:51 PM GMT+3 4 min read

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Quick Read

Robinhood (HOOD) CEO Tenev calls tokenization a financial supercycle, with Robinhood Chain already trading 190 tokenized U.S. stocks across 120+ countries.
Prediction markets generated $156 million in Q2 revenue as $6 billion in July volume pushed the user base to 2 million.
Robinhood posted record Q2 revenue of $1.31 billion, up 32% year over year, with total platform assets reaching $369 billion.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Robinhood didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev believes the global financial system is approaching its biggest technological transformation in decades. Speaking on CNBC's Squawk Box from D.C. ahead of meetings at the White House and the CFTC, Tenev framed the environment for tokenization in unusually sweeping terms: "We're at the beginning of a supercycle, and it's going to take over the entire financial system."

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Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD) has launched tokenized exposure to 190 U.S. stocks across more than 120 countries, expanded its prediction markets to billions of dollars in monthly volume, and attracted over 100,000 customers to AI-powered trading tools. Now Tenev wants U.S. regulators to open the domestic market before tokenized trading volume and financial innovation move permanently overseas.

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Robinhood Wants to Put Every Asset on Blockchain

Robinhood Chain launched outside the U.S. with tokenized exposure to 190 U.S. stocks, and those tokens trade 24/7 across more than 120 countries. Robinhood's CEO Tenev connected the technical shift to a broader societal claim: "I think that broad ownership, particularly of these innovative companies, is essential to maintaining a free, stable and prosperous society."

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On the company's earnings call in July, Tenev laid out the same vision in operational terms, describing Robinhood Chain as "purpose-built for real-world assets" and pitched the strategic upside: "Can we use the early success of Robinhood Chain to actually make all assets, make everything that you have in the U.S. available to billions of people worldwide?" The chain has already processed over $12 billion in DEX volume post-launch and became the fastest chain to reach 100 million transactions, according to company disclosures.

The Washington meetings signal that Tenev sees U.S. regulatory clarity as the missing piece. He wants the CFTC and the White House to greenlight tokenized U.S. equity trading domestically before overseas venues capture the liquidity.

Prediction Markets Just Generated $6 Billion in Monthly Volume

The second leg of the thesis is event contracts. "We've seen tremendous growth in our prediction markets business. Just in July, we had over $6 billion in volume," Tenev told CNBC, adding that volume is diversifying beyond sports into financial and crypto markets.

Robinhood's event contracts business generated $156 million in Q2 2026 revenue, and the Rothera joint venture with Susquehanna became a top 3 DCM in the U.S. after one month. Prediction market users grew from 1.5 million to roughly 2 million, with midterms cited as the next catalyst.

Robinhood Wants AI to Build Trading Strategies for Anyone

The third bet is AI. "Through our agentic products, we have over 100,000 customers. We're getting usage, and we're getting lots of feedback for what's working, what's not working, how we can make it better," Tenev said.

He drew a direct parallel to how AI has helped enable anyone to be their own developer: "In the same way that the agentic coding tools have allowed for an explosion of developer activity, the same thing will happen in financial services, where you can create increasingly sophisticated strategies and deploy them without having a computer science background."

Record Revenue Gives Tenev Room to Think Bigger

Robinhood posted record revenue of $1.31 billion in Q2 2026, up 32% year over year, with EPS of $0.62 against a $0.43 consensus. Total platform assets reached $369 billion.

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Tenev also flagged the Trump Accounts app, which currently offers S&P 500 exposure through a State Street ETF, as an on-ramp for the next generation of owners. 7 million children have signed up, with nearly $1.5 billion in contributions.

Key Takeaways

Robinhood is assembling a broader financial platform built around tokenized assets, prediction markets, and AI-generated trading strategies. Record revenue, $369 billion in platform assets, and rapid adoption across these newer products give that vision more credibility than it had even a year ago.

Regulation remains the biggest unresolved variable. Robinhood has already demonstrated that tokenized U.S. stocks can attract international demand, but bringing the model home will require support from Washington. If regulators provide a workable framework, Robinhood could become one of the primary gateways to a 24-hour, blockchain-based financial system.