One of the world’s foremost proponents of electronic retail trading predicts a clear convergence of digital and traditional assets, reinforcing one of the major themes of this year’s TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore.
“Everything Will be On-Chain”: Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev at TOKEN2049
2 October 2025 - 10:49 CEST
“I actually think cryptocurrency and traditional finance have been living in two different worlds for a while, but they’re going to merge,” Vlad Tenev, co-Founder and CEO of Robinhood Markets, said in an interview on stage at the event. “Everything will be on-chain in some form or another and the distinction will disappear.”
Robinhood, a financial technology company, has been operating a mobile-first brokerage and trading platform for a decade. Originally designed for stocks, the platform has been accepting cryptocurrency trades since about 2018 and is moving forcefully into the digital assets space. Robinhood doubled crypto-related revenue by increasing volume by almost a third in the second quarter of this year; it closed a $200 million acquisition of crypto exchange Bitstamp in June.
Tenev said his company will accommodate both traditional and alternative investments going forward, versus specializing in any particular asset class, and is already offering tokenized equities in the European Union: “I’m going all in on everything: big chip stack,” Tenev said.
Robinhood is even eying so-called prediction markets, which redefine gambling as predicting whether or not an event will take place in the hope of financial gain.
Tenev told the TOKEN2049 conference these markets represent a “big innovation” that “have some similarities with sports betting and gambling.”
