Robinhood CEO: Tokenization Solves Liquidity Problem

Stock Token Offerings - Robinhood offers EU stock tokens providing exposure to over 200 publicly listed equities, available 24/5, giving European customers access to U.S stocks [1] - Robinhood conducted a giveaway of private stock tokens for OpenAI and SpaceX to test the waters for resolving inequities in capital markets, where retail investors lack access to massive private companies [2] - Robinhood aims to offer thousands of private companies on the platform, accessible to retail investors, and has received numerous inquiries from private companies interested in tokenizing their shares [6] - The company gave away approximately $1 million worth of OpenAI tokens and $500,000 worth of SpaceX tokens [5] Regulatory Landscape - The Lithuanian regulator is reviewing the offering, raising questions to ensure its propriety as a new innovative product [3] - Robinhood welcomes discussions with regulators and believes the offering will withstand scrutiny [4] - The company is in ongoing discussions with regulators and is confident they will be satisfied [8] - Clear regulations in the European Union for crypto assets make this possible [15] Tokenization Structure and Valuation - Tokenization involves holding the underlying asset by a US broker or traditional financial business, with a tokenization engine minting new tokens upon customer acquisition and burning tokens upon sale [11] - The tokens are technically derivatives under EU MiCA and MiFID regulation [15] - Tokenization aims to solve the liquidity problem by tapping into a global network of hundreds of millions of crypto market participants [14] - The SEC Chairman called tokenization a great innovation [20]