The podcast comes fromThe Iced Coffee Hour
Compiled / Odaily Planet Daily Golem (@web 3_golem）
Editor’s note: On August 24, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was interviewed by the overseas podcast The Iced Coffee Hour. In the interview, Vlad Tenev elaborated on his vision for the future of RobinhoodChain, his views on the current stock market, the biggest challenges facing Robinhood, and addressed market criticisms regarding its launch of a prediction market. Vlad Tenev emphasized that the explosion of Meme coins on RobinhoodChain was unexpected by the team, but he personally enjoys cryptocurrencies, having engaged in crypto trading for a while, and appreciates the feeling of fighting alongside everyone. He also expressed optimism about holding Bitcoin for the long term.
In this interview, Vlad Tenev also shared aspects of his personal life. Outside of work, he is focused on teaching his children math, has recently become fond of saunas, cold baths, and hot-cold therapy, and to break the habit of using his phone before bed, he is committed to journaling and reading physical books at bedtime... Odaily Planet Daily has compiled the core content of the interview as follows, enjoy~
Robinhood Chain is the future of finance
Host: What will the future of finance look like?
Vlad Tenev: I believe RobinhoodChain is it. I don’t know how familiar you are with Robinhood Chain; it is currently one of the hottest chains in the cryptocurrency space. We launched it a few weeks ago, and it has consistently ranked in the top five in DEX trading volume, with rapid growth in TVL. One of the advantages of RobinhoodChain is that it supports stock tokens, which are tokenized versions of stocks. Even though they are currently only available to users outside of the U.S., they can still be traded in over 120 countries around the world.
If you hold Tesla, Nvidia, or stock tokens from other companies on Robinhood Chain, you can do everything you can do with blockchain cryptocurrencies, such as sending them to other addresses on the chain like sending Bitcoin or Ethereum, or trading in liquidity pools. Uniswap has some very active liquidity pools on Robinhood Chain where users can stake and borrow.
Although tax policies in these 120+ countries vary slightly, as long as someone creates a liquidity pool for exchanging stock tokens and cryptocurrencies, users can directly exchange them. We initially used stablecoins like USDG, but later developers created a variety of unique liquidity pools we never anticipated would exist, along with various protocols.
For example, if users hold a certain Meme coin, they will receive stock tokens directly through an airdrop. They have linked Meme coins, mainstream cryptocurrencies, and stock tokens to create some unique products, products we had never anticipated creating ourselves.
Robinhood Chain combines a developer platform with fundamental financial features like high-yield stock tokens, and we will continue to supplement these features.
Today, other brokerages are facing challenges due to their size. There are many competitors in this field, and traditional giants have massive scales, managing trillions of dollars in assets. However, Robinhood's product delivery speed is faster and more modern, which means we can attract a younger clientele. Over the coming decades, their wealth will continue to grow. So, to some extent, Robinhood is also a beneficiary of the ongoing wealth transfer wave.
How do you view AI and stock market bubbles?
Host: Are you worried about a bubble in AI or the stock market? Could it adversely affect Robinhood?
Vlad Tenev: I think that in certain aspects, the alarm bells have started to ring. We have been receiving a large number of feature requests from clients; indeed, some users want features related to trading overseas stocks, but for a long time, this demand has not made it into the top ten. About a month or two ago, the most frequently asked question in every interview became, “When will you launch Korean stocks?”
Investors want to trade Korean stocks; no one wants to predict markets or cryptocurrencies. Although we will launch Korean stocks, the sheer number of people requesting this is indeed a bit concerning, and as expected, the Korean stock market has experienced severe fluctuations.
However, our clients have always prioritized innovation. So in the past, we were one of the earliest institutions to invest in electric vehicles, and now they are obviously also interested in cryptocurrencies and AI. However, directly investing in AI companies is quite challenging, and we are addressing this through Robinhood Ventures. Previously, everyone was focused on semiconductors, and now many are discussing energy. So I think investors need to maintain a very complex balance in both the chip and energy categories.
On one hand, the demand for AI is continuously growing, which will inevitably affect chips and all the production processes in its underlying technology stack; on the other hand, traders are also buying chips, including some hedge funds, because they know that even if they don’t need these chips, they can resell them at a higher price. Whether something is undervalued depends on many factors, but if a large supply is bought by speculators, even in a field with enormous growth potential like AI chips, problems may arise.
Host: Do you think the currently high stock market is disadvantageous for young people in their twenties and thirties?
Vlad Tenev: I believe opportunities exist at all times. In 2020, around the time of the pandemic, the stock market crashed, but our clients were buying, while customers of other brokerages were selling. Ultimately, our clients bought because they are younger, focus on long-term investments, and see opportunities. They maintain a fundamentally optimistic view of the national economy, are hopeful for various projects being developed at that time, and the opportunities offered by the stock market.
Many people have asked me if I am worried about a stock market correction. To be honest, I am not too worried, because our past experience shows that younger clientele tend to view stock market corrections as opportunities.
However, this does not mean that I hope for a correction; I wouldn’t even want prices to fall continuously, as that would be unfortunate for the economy and investors. Everyone hopes for stable price increases, but that is not realistic. I believe that for traders, any market environment contains opportunities to grasp, although predicting these opportunities and timing them is not easy.
Optimizing user experience is Robinhood's biggest challenge today
Host: What was the biggest mistake you made in the past year?
Vlad Tenev: To be honest, while I’ve made many small mistakes, my mindset has always been about how I should move forward. I don’t like to dwell on the past; I always think that over-analyzing past decisions only leads to inaction. What we should really focus on is where we currently stand. Sometimes I even prefer to be in a position of being behind, as the underdog, because I feel that gives us a clear target to strive towards.
In the past year, we've launched prediction market services for active traders, which is an interesting new track for us, but we were not the first players to launch this product.
Before Robinhood, stock trading had already existed for decades, and electronic trading had long been popular. We just optimized it by bringing it to smartphones and implementing zero commissions. We also did not catch the early wave with cryptocurrency trading; we launched related services in 2018, which compared to traditional financial companies is relatively early, but many crypto-native companies started as early as 2012 or even earlier. For instance, Bitstamp, which we acquired, is one of the oldest continuously operating cryptocurrency exchanges.
So we are not the earliest entrants in the prediction market space, but when this type of business gained legal status in the U.S., we were one of the first to launch related products. Within just a few weeks, we rolled out the product, and then continued to iterate and expand. Now, this business generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, and it has become our fastest-growing business line ever.
The challenge I spend the most time thinking about now is: since we have laid out so many business lines, how can we ensure that users’ core experiences are unified and coherent? We are also investing more in personalizing and refining application experiences to make the interface cleaner.
Host: How will Robinhood improve in response to market criticism in the future?
Vlad Tenev: Some have criticized that our products lack coherence, and the company’s mission and stance are unclear and hard to understand. This criticism is reasonable, and we have received similar feedback. Everyone always wants new features, such as supporting Korean stocks. This demand is understandable; I even think we should not only support Korean stocks but also stocks from markets around the world. However, there are just too many things we have yet to address because the list of features we need to implement is seemingly endless. Our work can be broadly divided into three directions.
The first type is infrastructure optimization, which is aimed at enhancing the existing experience, such as faster speeds, prettier and simpler UI, and more reliable UX, so that we can better respond to traffic peaks and similar situations. Just in the past year, we have made significant progress in this area.
The second type of products includes those offered by other brokerages that Robinhood currently does not have, such as trust accounts, overseas stock trading that can also be done on some of our competitor platforms, and fixed-income products. We still have many products that have not been launched, and these products are quite important components in clients' investment portfolios.
In addition, there is a third category; there are not many companies currently operating in this field, but the core issue is whether we can innovate and whether we can be the first among our peers to launch new products. Prediction markets, Robinhood Ventures, Robinhood Chain, and Robinhood Earn all fall into this category.
We also want to add some completely unexpected products to Robinhood, such as AI-driven trading. Currently, there aren't any prominent institutions or teams conducting serious research in this area, except for us.
Users who do not want the prediction market feature can choose to disable it
Host: Some have also criticized Robinhood for focusing too much on the prediction market, likening it to gambling. What is your response to that?
Vlad Tenev: In fact, the criticism we receive is two-fold. Some users completely do not want to see prediction market functions, and in response to that demand, we have introduced personalized settings and a series of related measures, not just allowing users to directly disable this function, but more importantly, ensuring that when users want to see it, they can view the content they want in the App.
So this is a major focus of our work, not only with the prediction market but also across more of our different products and functionalities. The core issue we need to address is that users are simply unaware that we have launched a quality feature that can benefit them.
Therefore, there are two voices out there: one is “I don’t want to see this product (the prediction market)”; the other is “I want to see it more conveniently; it's too hidden in the product page. I don’t want to jump through three hoops to find it; I just want to see the current updates immediately.” We believe that personalized settings provide the solution to this issue.
Additionally, we are trying another approach: in certain situations where the experience difference is indeed significant, we will split related functionalities into separate Apps, for example, banking services. So if users want banking and card-related experiences, they can use a banking App; if users want a trading-focused experience, they can use the green version of the Robinhood App; if they want complete cryptocurrency-related features, Robinhood Wallet can provide a native DeFi experience.
Personal investment: Love for crypto trading and optimism about Bitcoin
Host: Do you personally trade on Robinhood? Or would you keep your Robinhood shares entirely on the Robinhood platform?
Vlad Tenev: The Robinhood shares I own are not held on the Robinhood platform. That's because my own shares, along with those of all our employees, are managed by a dedicated institution; the employee stock ownership plan has special requirements, along with the so-called 10b5-1 plan, which means I cannot trade my Robinhood shares freely. I must follow a specific pre-approved plan when trading, as required by regulatory bodies.
However, I do trade using Robinhood. But now I have to be especially cautious when trading individual stocks; I find ETFs to be simpler and more straightforward. I have played around with cryptocurrencies for a while because I genuinely enjoy them. I love crypto trading and the feeling of working alongside everyone. Unfortunately, I haven’t been active on Reddit lately; I did use Reddit when I first started with Robinhood.
Host: What cryptocurrencies do you hold?
Vlad Tenev: I think cryptocurrencies are a very interesting trading asset. But I want to reiterate that I do not recommend any specific cryptocurrencies; my investment portfolio is quite diversified.
Bitcoin is unique in many ways; it is the first crypto asset and the earliest Meme coin, possessing significant brand influence. While newcomers can create many imitators of Bitcoin, no one can ever replace it as the first and the most trusted crypto asset. When companies build crypto asset reserves for hedging against inflation and engaging in various related operations, Bitcoin is also the first cryptocurrency they think of. Therefore, I hold an optimistic view of Bitcoin in the long run, as its uniqueness gives it an edge over similar coins. However, I cannot predict specific price figures like it reaching a million dollars.
Personal life: Focused on teaching children math, maintaining habits of journaling and reading before bed
Host: Besides Robinhood, do you have any personal goals?
Vlad Tenev: I have recently been focused on teaching my children math. I believe math is important, and I want them to love learning and maintain curiosity. So whenever I have time to be with them, even though it’s far less than I would hope, I try to discuss history with them, encourage them to solve math problems, and understand what’s happening at school.
They have some advantages that I didn’t have when I was young. For instance, they can access top-notch tutors and communicate with anyone they wish. What I worry about is how to make sure they enjoy these benefits without experiencing too many negative effects. Being my children, they will certainly feel that everything comes easily to them as they grow up, which might diminish the drive I had to strive to better myself.
If I didn’t work hard back then, my parents would bluntly tell me that we didn’t have the money for you to go to college; you would most likely need a scholarship, and you had to get all these things done yourself. Plus, we were on a visa, so our status in this country was very unstable, and I always felt a constant pressure: if I didn't perform well, my family might have to move back to Bulgaria.
Now that pressure has eased a bit, which is somewhat positive, but conversely, if one lacks that urgency, intentionally pressuring the kids may not be good. But honestly, I am really proud of them; despite the absence of that pressure, they have still grown into remarkable individuals.
As for other goals, I focus on my health. As I get older, I need to ensure I remain in good physical and mental shape. I have undergone full-body MRIs, I have routine blood tests, and I strive to maintain a regular exercise routine. Recently, I have become fond of saunas, cold baths, and hot-cold therapy.
I am also working hard to establish a bedtime routine, because I find it easy to pick up my phone or iPad and end up scrolling through the company’s Slack and reading documents until the moment I close my eyes. Sometimes it feels like my phone is about to smash me in the face. So now I write in my journal for 10 to 15 minutes before bed and read a physical book for 15 to 20 minutes to help myself gradually relax.
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