Robinhood's Crypto Ambition: Becoming the "Only Financial Portal" for the Young Generation

Whoever captures the crypto wallet of Generation Z will hold the future of finance.

Written by: Nina Bambysheva, Forbes

Translated by: Luffy, Foresight News

It might seem odd for crypto financiers to appear at the Château des Fleurs. This 25-acre "Belle Époque" style villa sits on a hillside, overlooking the Bay of Cannes. But on a sunny afternoon in June, Robinhood rented this legendary estate famous for its appearance in Hitchcock's film "To Catch a Thief" and hosted a crypto-themed event called "To Catch a Token" - an event planned by Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood's crypto business head based on the Côte d'Azur.

The event began dramatically: in a video, Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev drives a 1962 midnight blue Jaguar E-Type convertible along the coastal road, paying homage to Cary Grant's classic entrance in "To Catch a Thief". After the video, Tenev appears in person - wearing a Tom Ford white pinstripe suit, a black and white striped scarf, and carrying a green briefcase - greeting over 300 invited guests, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and executives from financial giants like JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Stripe.

This "dramatized" appearance was not without purpose. Robinhood's stock price has reached $111 per share, a historic high, up 384% from last year, with its market value soaring to nearly $98 billion, ranking among the world's 250 most valuable companies. In 2024, Robinhood's profits reached $1.4 billion, with revenues close to $3 billion, managing $255 billion in assets, and a net deposit growth rate of 44% over the past year. By active or non-zero funded accounts, Robinhood's 26 million accounts are quickly catching up with Charles Schwab's 37 million, and are 3 times the size of E-Trade and 6 times that of Merrill Lynch. Tenev's personal wealth has grown 6-fold in a year, reaching $6.1 billion.

Vlad Tenev cover photo, taken by Guerin Blask for Forbes

This 38-year-old CEO is always busy. In late May, he spoke to 35,000 Bitcoin supporters in Las Vegas about how cryptocurrencies will further disrupt global finance through "tokenization", converting stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets into digital tokens that can be traded 24/7 on blockchain networks. He then rushed to Tampa for a registered investment advisor conference, and weeks later appeared in Robinhood's luxurious Manhattan office to deliver the annual shareholder speech. "This week in New York, then to France, then to the UK," he quickly listed his itinerary, then enumerated Robinhood's dozen offices in the US, Europe, and Asia, "I need to visit each office at least once a year, and they keep increasing."

Although Tenev has a youthful appearance, with a hairstyle and goatee reminiscent of Errol Flynn's Robin Hood from 1938, his speech now sounds like that of a mature large financial group CEO. This emerging brokerage firm, which rose from the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, has "grown up" and wants to become a one-stop financial service provider for "digital natives" - a generation more accustomed to digital trading. According to Cerulli Associates, over the next 20 years, they will inherit about $124 trillion in assets, mostly from their Baby Boomer parents.

A week before the "carefully designed" appearance at the French estate, Tenev explained the purpose of such events for Robinhood: "New products are launched quickly, and this is a good way to show the world what we're doing. We need to be clear about the story each event wants to convey, which can also greatly motivate the team."

This castle event was Robinhood's first international crypto-themed event, announcing several major updates: starting in July, Robinhood will allow European users to trade blockchain-based "stock tokens" - a non-voting derivative tracking hundreds of US stocks and ETFs, including unlisted tech giants like SpaceX and OpenAI. Trading will be commission-free, 24/7, five days a week. For US users, Robinhood is opening crypto staking, allowing users to lock Ethereum, Solana, and other crypto assets on blockchain networks to earn yields. In June, Robinhood acquired Luxembourg crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million, unlocking perpetual futures trading for Bitcoin and Ethereum for European users. Underpinning all this is the blockchain Robinhood is building itself.

"Our industry is at a critical turning point," Tenev told the VIPs cooling off on the Riviera, "We have the opportunity to prove our long-held belief: cryptocurrencies are far more than speculative assets; they have the potential to become the backbone of the global financial system. We want to turn this possibility into a certainty."

To understand Tenev's "ambition", it's worth reviewing Robinhood's turbulent past. In 2013, Stanford physics and mathematics graduate Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt saw a disruptive opportunity. After graduation, they developed high-frequency trading software for large hedge funds, witnessing these funds' massive demand for trading volume. Retail investors accustomed to paying $10-25 per trade on brokerages like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Merrill Lynch could be a huge source of trading volume. So they created a mobile trading app for beginners, eliminating account minimums and commissions because they knew hedge funds would pay to execute retail orders. They promoted this zero-commission platform with the slogan "democratizing investing", and its launch was as hot as a hit game.

Before Robinhood's launch, the waiting list on the Apple App Store was nearly 1 million. By September 2019, traditional brokerages like Charles Schwab, E-Trade, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade (acquired by Charles Schwab in 2020) had all eliminated commissions, making this emerging company's model the new industry standard.

However, the victory did not last long. In early 2021, driven by pandemic lockdowns and government economic stimulus policies, app trading volume surged but triggered a regulatory storm during the "GameStop meme stock frenzy". Pushed by the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, GameStop's stock price soared, seemingly ignoring its dismal fundamentals. This unprecedented volatility triggered massive collateral requirements for Robinhood's clearing house, forcing Tenev to suspend buying of the stock on the platform. This was followed by user anger, public criticism, and congressional inquiries, including questions related to a young Robinhood options trader's suicide.

But this turbulence exposed the outdated, opaque, and inefficient nature of US stock trading, instead clarifying an idea Tenev had been contemplating: "Can we really put stocks on the blockchain? I believe its value lies in enabling 24/7 stock trading."

Robinhood initially tried to innovate the traditional system by partnering with alternative trading platforms like Blue Ocean in West Palm Beach to extend trading hours, but these efforts were thwarted. "I didn't realize how difficult it was to change these core infrastructures because so much depends on them. I might have been a bit naive," Tenev admits.

Meanwhile, his crypto business head Kerbrat was exploring other implementation paths. Due to the cautious attitude of US regulators towards digital assets during the Biden administration, the team moved their experiments to Europe, where rules were clearer. "Sometimes, it's easier to build new infrastructure from scratch. We believe this technology can adapt to any jurisdiction, and given time, we can make it global," Tenev says, knowing that as millions of global investors begin trading US stocks like meme coins, his profitable trading volume machine could grow exponentially.

While Kerbrat was deeply engaged in European tokenization business, Robinhood was also reinventing itself in other areas. In March 2024, Bhatt (who stepped down as co-CEO in 2020), now worth $6.7 billion, left the company to venture into space solar energy. Despite ongoing user lawsuits stemming from the GameStop incident, Tenev has been busy launching a series of new products: Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA), high-yield savings accounts, a credit card with 3% cashback (with a waitlist of 3 million), on-demand cash delivery private banking services, and complex option tools previously available only to institutional investors. As Cantor Fitzgerald's managing director Brett Knoblauch put it, transforming Robinhood into a "mousetrap that can trade anything".

This intense release pace aligns with the designer's own rhythm. The Bulgarian-born CEO, with an open palm and a gesture of "helplessness", reflected: "I simply wake up to work, eat, exercise, and sleep. My wife doesn't like me saying this, but I actually prefer to integrate work into my personal life."

Tenev said that during Robinhood's explosive growth period, he didn't fully anticipate the deep resonance of "accessible trading" with entrepreneurial spirit. At a private event in Miami last year, the company's top users included self-taught day traders, small business owners, and startup founders, whose approach to the market mirrored their "DIY spirit" when founding companies. He believes this strong independent impulse is Robinhood's true "moat": "Entrepreneurs don't believe other experts can manage their affairs; they like to explore on their own." Robinhood was designed for them, a control panel for self-managing funds without "gatekeepers".

Tenev plans to lead the next generation of investors in three "phases". First, win the active trader market, with immediate investment returns based on Robinhood's current strong performance. Medium-term (around 5 years), cover all users' financial needs, from credit cards to cryptocurrencies, mortgages, and IRAs. Finally, build the world's first financial ecosystem, potentially anchored by Robinhood's blockchain. Tenev said while preparing for the next day's shareholders meeting: "The scale will be much larger than the first two phases. Opportunities start slowly but will compound over time."

tags.]

However, this did not prevent others from entering the market. In June, Gemini of the Winklevoss brothers launched tokenized stock trading for EU users. Coinbase is reportedly seeking SEC approval to offer tokenized stocks, and even Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock managing $12.5 trillion in assets, is urging the SEC to approve tokenization of stocks and bonds. Robinhood went further: in addition to stocks, it is also tokenizing private companies and has announced tokenization of stocks in OpenAI and SpaceX, both currently valued at over $300 billion. OpenAI has publicly denied Robinhood's product, emphasizing that these tokens are not authorized or endorsed by the company. "No founder wants their equity to circulate on-chain, held by unknown holders," Hadick warned.

Facing skeptics, Tenev is an experienced "veteran". "It's indeed a bit 'rough' at the moment," he admits, "I think brokers don't want us to easily 'pull out' their stocks. But what if it becomes self-custodial? When you can tokenize and self-custody, you can be independent of the broker's infrastructure - just like you can use crypto wallets on MetaMask, Robinhood, or Coinbase. In the future, you'll be able to seamlessly hold stocks through any interface and trade in almost all scenarios."

This is precisely why Tenev is obsessed with making Robinhood the "only financial tool" for young users. In retail financial services, the power of "inertia" is second only to compound interest. Users are essentially "sticky", but Tenev knows that as trillions of dollars of Baby Boomer assets are inherited by digital natives, financial giants like Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Merrill Lynch are becoming vulnerable. In fact, he believes his biggest competitors are not Coinbase or Fidelity, but companies like Anthropic and OpenAI: "They move the fastest and do the most interesting things. But it's too early to say ChatGPT will disrupt the financial industry."

Malka, an early Robinhood investor (whom Tenev calls a mentor and who, according to Forbes, has profited over $5 billion from this investment), is Tenev's "hardcore fan": "Robinhood's leaders are under 40, extremely 'AI-native', understand the future of AI, understand tokenization, and can combine these two strategies - something few can do. We're seeing the dawn of money's 'internet moment' - where anyone globally can invest in the same product. Credit approvals will be more sophisticated, loans will be cheaper. All of this will be realized."

Tenev believes that Robinhood will ultimately deploy AI agents to replicate and optimize family office services, putting a "family office in your pocket".

AI is so core to Tenev's vision that this former math PhD candidate recently co-founded and chairs the AI startup Harmonic, operating alongside computer scientist Tudor Achim, who previously led the self-driving company Helm.ai. In July, Harmonic raised $100 million in Series B funding from Kleiner Perkins, Paradigm, and Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $875 million. This "mathematical superintelligence" laboratory is building an advanced reasoning engine that "guarantees accuracy and eliminates hallucinations" - undoubtedly a useful feature in an era where AI and money intersect.

"It would be amazing if we could solve the Riemann Hypothesis or other major millennium problems on a mobile app," Tenev says thoughtfully, "I don't want to just be a spectator, but hope to actively participate."