A day after Robinhood unveiled an expansion of its tokenized equities offering, CEO Vlad Tenev said the growth of the digital assets industry hinges on bringing real-world assets (RWAs) onchain rather than creating tokens without underlying utility.
"The future of crypto is in real-world assets," Tenev told CNBC on Thursday morning. "If an asset is not tied to an underlying utility, it's not a productive asset. What's the benefit of making a million different memecoins?"
On Wednesday, Robinhood launched Stock Tokens, a service that allows eligible users to trade tokenized equities 24/7, and eventually deploy those assets into lending pools where they can be used as trading collateral across the broader DeFi ecosystem. Robinhood is also working on ways to offer users exposure to privately held companies like OpenAI.
Asked whether the crypto market has entered into an "enduring crypto winter," Tenev spoke to his belief in the merging of traditional finance and crypto. Robinhood, which started as a popular app for retail traders to buy and sell stocks, has been expanding its offerings of tokenized RWAs to include U.S. equities and derivatives of private companies.
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