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I'm pleased to say joining us now is Robin Hood's CEO of vlad Tenev, along with Bloomberg's Chanali Bassk, or expert on.
All things crypto.
Lad.
I want to start with the SEC here, because, as you heard from Nathan Dean, those in the crypto industry are pretty pleased probably with Paul Atkins becoming Chair of the SEC once he is confirmed. I'm curious to start off with your take, your assessment of how much interim chair Mark Ueda has done to enable Atkins to hit the ground running once he is confirmed.
I think we're very optimistic about Paul Atkins. He's I think he has the right mindset. The US needs to be a leader in this important, new, burgeoning industry, and we really like what we're hearing. And I think on an interim basis, the SEC has actually done more than
I think in the past four years. Certainly, although admittedly that's not a very high bar to provide clarity clarifying that, for example, meme coins are not securities, as well as clarity that they've provided on staking unregistered staking has been very helpful. So that's a start we also need clarity on stable coin, and having stable coin clarity will further US dollar dominance, particularly overseas and with market structure, which
I know the previous guests just spoke about. Market structure is also critical because if we can pave a path towards tokenization of securities, that ensures dominance of US assets and also US companies overseas. So tokenization, accredited investor relaxation, because the accredited investor rules need a complete rethink. I think I think those are things that we look forward to working with the incoming administration and share adkins upon confirmation.
I think those are two big priorities for continued dominance of the US financial system globally.
You know, I'm glad you brought up meme coins in particular. I think we've talked about this a bunch in the past. But the proliferation of meme coins you've seen and the precipice of relaxing listing standards across different exchanges, do you worry that this might go too far?
At what point are you even looking.
For the sec to step in and say this is what the barrier is.
Yeah, I think there's two ways to look at it. One is obviously there's a huge proliferation of different types of coins. The barrier to creating a coin has dropped tremendously where someone can just go on their computer and immediately create something that has access to global liquidity and trades quite a bit.
But there's a positive to that.
There's an immense amount of power in that because juxtapose it with the immense difficulty in a company going public. You have to pay tens of millions of dollars in fees, it takes several months. It's so complex and burdensome that companies aren't even doing it anymore. I mean, you have to be at tens of billions, maybe hundreds of billions
of valuation before it starts making sense. So I think this technology provides an alternative, and if you compare it to traditional capital formation, there's definitely advantages, and I think that's what happens. That's why it's so important to have a comprehensive securities market structure framework for crypto assets so that you can tap into that.
What's incredible too, is just in the last twenty four hours we hear at Bloomberg have reported that open ai is close to finalizing a forty billion dollar fundraiser that would value the company at three hundred billion dollars. It would be the largest of all time. This is not
open to retail investors. To your point on accreditation rules, how drastically do you think that they could change under the new SEC chair such that more Americans would have better access to younger companies before they become three hundred billion dollar companies.
Yeah, I mean you wouldn't be surprised to hear that. I think they need a total reboot. I think it should be much more self certification. I think platforms like robinhoods should obviously be required to clearly communicate the risks and put different types of companies into different buckets and
make that clear to customers. But at the end of the day, I think it's it's silly that you know those companies are deemed too risky for non accredited retail investors, effectively shutting out out over eighty percent of the investor base from a company like open ai or SpaceX.
So, Lott, I want to ask you about twenty four seven trading. The NAZAC is planning to launch that later on in twenty twenty six. You already offer a twenty four hour market in some products. How much can you expand on that with NAZAC and other exchanges moving over to a twenty four to seven kind of trading policy.
Yeah, I mean we're really happy to see the major exchanges integrating and supporting twenty four hour markets. I think they've been reluctant to do so just because there's operational complexity, and so Robinhood has taken on a lot of that complexity on behalf of our customers to make it easy to stitch stitch together different market sessions so that you have that round the clock trading experience.
And I think we have to go beyond that.
I mean markets still, our US equity markets aren't open on Saturdays or holidays, for instance, and I think we have to work to resolve that. So the big exchanges coming in is a big step forward. It unlocks greater liquidity, It makes it easier for more participants to come in who don't have the capabilities to easily do what we've done in terms of making the technology available, and I think it's part of a progression it ends in twenty
four to seven. I mean, this is like the last vestige of brick and mortar finance in trading, and I think eventually it'll be completely digital like the crypto industry. I think that's where it's all heading.
Robinhood is entering the banking sector. The trading platform said today it will be rolling out checking and savings acounts this year, as well as a wealth management service to its Gold subscribers. The CEO of Robinhood of Latenet is still with us and lad this idea of offering wealth management services to your customers. How much of this is about replacing your customer's existing bank accounts to be their new bank.
It's really about giving you the power of a financial team through Robinhood across your entire financial journey. So Robinhood Banking gives you what we believe to be the highest quality almost private private banking like experience in digital form to our customers.
So that one's very exciting.
Robinhood Cortex, which is basically your research assistant powered by AI that can help you with your self directed trading and investing needs. And then Robinhood Strategies, which we think is going to be the best digital advice offering on the market.
And so we have.
Banking, we've got self directed, we've got digital advice, and also with the Trade PMR acquisition, we're going to for customers who want in person advice with an actual advisor that offering as well. So it's really wherever you are in the journey, Robinhood should help you manage your finances with the best experience and the lowest possible costs.
How competitive do you plan to be on rates? We've seen you come out with products before, like margin accounts, and you've been quite competitive. Are you looking to offer better rates than the current banking rivals out there on checking in savings? Are you looking to beat the likes of a Marcus for example.
Yeah, we announced yesterday at our Gold event that on the banking side, we're going to be very competitive on rates. You'll get the same four percent ap y that Robinhood offers through a cash suite product in savings accounts, which is nine times the national average. So that product's very very I mean, it's done quite well and we're going
to bring that same rate to bank. The rate on the digital advice Robinhood strategies offering is also very innovative because not only is it a low zero point two five percent of assets under under management, but we cap that at two hundred and fifty dollars per year. So let's say you have you know, a million dollars managed with Robinhood strategies, you're still paying only two hundred and fifty dollars a year. If you have ten million, it's
also capped at that amount. So for a digital advice offering, you're getting the same service even if you're managing ten times as much money. So why are you paying ten times as much at other places? So we're fundamentally breaking that model for digital advice.
Lat How far are you going to go in terms offering services to your customers? Are you going to offer conventional loans at some point? Could we see I don't know, let's just say personal loans, mortgages at some point from Robinhood.
Yeah, right now. With the Robinhood credit card, which in my opinion is the.
Best credit card on the market, three percent cash back on all categories. That lets you have essentially a credit card loan that we administer. And that's the most complex type of loan because the velocity of it is fast. It's a frequent use case product. So that kind of gets us in there. If you think about these other products, whether it be a personal loan or a mortgage, those are less frequent, So from a product experience standpoint, it's actually much much less complex for us to offer that
in the future. Credit card is the most difficult, and we're tackling that first.
We're focused on that. It's going incredibly well.
We announced that we're going to double the number of customers that the credit card is rolled out to in the next week, and that's going to be an advance of dramatically accelerating the roll out this year, So we're definitely moving in that direction.
Flat.
We don't have a lot of time here, we have less than a minute, but I do want to ask a question just quickly on stable coin, really quickly. You were talking about how this twenty four to seven trading phenomenon you expect to expand in a pretty meaningful way. But the way that it's done at Robinhood is by using stable coin. And there's also separate legislation being passed in Congress on the brink of it to allow stable
coins to be more usable across the financial industry. Do you think this is going to become more commonplace practice.
I think so. Yeah.
I think that it's a good first step for crypto legislation in Congress because generally everyone agrees that we should have stable coins and that they're good for the country, for the local companies and the crypto industry.
But it's not going to be enough.
I think we need comprehensive market structure legislation coming in quickly thereafter, because there's so many things that are not stipulated to stable coin bill. You still need to figure out how to pay interest, pay yield to stable coin holders, and that's not really stipulated, and of course securities. Being able to tokenize securities is the largest opportunity, the one that I think is going to be most important for us to get legislation on.
Got it all right, Tenive, thank you so much. Lod Tonive is CEO, Robin thanks for having me. And we also want to thank Bloomberg, Scchanale, Basic