For Vlad Tenev, the tokenisation of shares is not simply an additional feature of Robinhood alongside its traditional brokerage business, but an attempt to transform the very infrastructure of securities trading. His idea is to transfer traditional financial assets onto the blockchain and endow them with the characteristics to which the crypto market has long been accustomed: virtually continuous trading, global accessibility, programmability and the ability to interact with other on-chain products. Whereas blockchain infrastructure was previously associated, for the average user, primarily with operations such as buying cryptocurrencies and transferring them between wallets, Robinhood’s approach involves applying the same technological principles to traditional financial assets. In 2025, the company began rolling out this model in Europe, and in 2026 it expanded it significantly, whilst simultaneously developing its own Robinhood Chain. Tenev sees this as part of a broader convergence between traditional brokerage and crypto infrastructure.
What Robinhood Calls Tokenised Stocks
At first glance, Stock Tokens look like shares of Apple, Nvidia, or other US companies transferred onto the blockchain. Legally, however, the structure is more complex. A buyer of such a product does not become the direct owner of the corresponding share and does not receive the standard set of shareholder rights.
Under Robinhood’s European model, Classic Stock Tokens are derivative contracts whose value tracks the price of an underlying share or ETF. The client gains economic exposure to the price movement of the security but does not acquire the security itself and, in particular, does not receive voting rights. Robinhood states this separately in the product documentation.
In the summer of 2026, the company launched a new generation of Stock Tokens. They are issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited as tokenised debt securities and likewise provide economic exposure to underlying assets, but not legal or beneficial rights to the shares themselves. This is a fundamental point: tokenisation is currently changing the way market exposure is obtained, but it does not turn every token into a conventional share on the blockchain.
Why Tenev Considers the Existing Infrastructure Outdated
The conventional stock market is built around numerous intermediaries: brokers, exchanges, clearing organisations, depositories, custodians, and payment infrastructure. A transaction that appears instantaneous to a user in an app passes through an entire chain of systems behind the scenes.
Blockchain offers Tenev the opportunity to combine some of these functions within a single technological environment. A token exists in a digital ledger, can be transferred programmatically, and settlement can potentially take place much closer to the transaction itself.
But the main advantage for Robinhood is not simply the technical acceleration of settlement. Tenev aims to make financial assets global in terms of their infrastructure. Under the traditional model, access to shares of a US company depends on whether a particular country has a broker, the relevant agreements, trading hours, and the necessary market infrastructure. A tokenised product can theoretically be distributed much more widely through a unified blockchain system.
That is why, in 2026, Tenev described Europe as a kind of testing ground for Robinhood built “on crypto rails”: instead of conventional US shares, users are offered their tokenised equivalents.
From 200 Stocks to Thousands of Tokenised Assets
When Robinhood launched Stock Tokens for European clients in June 2025, the offering began with more than 200 US stocks and ETFs, including Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft. Trading was available 24 hours a day, five days a week.
Within a year, the scale of the project increased substantially. By 2026, Robinhood reported more than 2,000 tokens linked to US stocks and other exchange-traded instruments available to European clients. In July, the company also announced a new generation of Stock Tokens for eligible users in more than 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet.
This expansion shows that the project is not about testing a handful of popular securities. Robinhood is gradually creating a parallel catalogue of traditional assets that exists on blockchain infrastructure.
For investors, this potentially changes several familiar limitations:
-
the trading session is no longer rigidly dependent on the operating hours of a particular stock exchange;
-
fractional positions become easier to implement technically;
-
a single digital wallet can combine cryptocurrencies and tokenised traditional assets;
-
assets may eventually be able to interact with DeFi applications;
-
geographical access to the US market may become significantly broader.
The final point is particularly important to Tenev’s strategy: Robinhood is attempting to turn tokenisation into a tool for the global distribution of US financial assets.
Robinhood Chain — the Next Stage of the Strategy
If Robinhood simply issued derivative tokens within its own application, the project would remain a modernised version of a conventional broker. That is why Robinhood Chain — its own Ethereum Layer 2 network focused on financial assets and the tokenisation of real-world assets — has become a central part of the strategy.
In the first quarter of 2026, Robinhood reported that the public Robinhood Chain testnet had already processed more than 100 million transactions. In the summer, the company announced the launch of the public mainnet and directly linked it to the further development of tokenised assets.
This is where Tenev’s broader vision becomes apparent. He does not want blockchain to remain infrastructure exclusively for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or speculative tokens. In 2026, the head of Robinhood emphasised that he sees the main potential of crypto technology specifically in bringing real-world assets into the on-chain environment.
If this model develops further, a share ceases to be an instrument available only within a traditional brokerage account. Its digital equivalent could potentially be stored in a wallet, used as collateral, transferred between applications, or become part of DeFi protocols. These are precisely the properties Tenev considers advantages that traditional brokerage infrastructure finds difficult to replicate.
Tenev’s Most Controversial Idea — Tokenising Private Companies
Robinhood went particularly far in its attempt to extend this model to companies that are not publicly traded at all. In 2025, the platform introduced promotional tokens linked to OpenAI and SpaceX.
This immediately revealed the legal boundary between a share and a token that merely tracks its economic value. OpenAI publicly stated that it had not collaborated with Robinhood on the product, had not participated in its issuance, and had not approved the offering. Robinhood explained the structure in terms of its economic exposure through a special-purpose vehicle.
Robinhood’s own documents also clarify that such Private Company Stock Tokens are not actual shares in the corresponding private companies and do not give holders the right to receive those shares.
Nevertheless, the idea demonstrates Tenev’s strategic goal: to give retail investors economic access not only to public companies but, potentially, to the private market as well, where the most attractive deals have traditionally been available to venture capital funds, institutional investors, and wealthy clients.
Why Tokenisation Has Not Yet Replaced the Traditional Stock Market
The most important caveat is that Robinhood has not yet eliminated intermediaries completely. A tokenised product is still backed by a legal structure, an issuer, and a mechanism that links its value to the underlying security.
In addition, the absence of direct ownership creates fundamental differences from an ordinary share. A token holder must consider not only the risk associated with Apple, Nvidia, or another company itself, but also the risk of the structure that issued the token, the terms of the contract, the regulatory regime, and the product’s collateralisation mechanism.
In September 2026, this issue became particularly visible following Robinhood’s conflict with AMC Entertainment. AMC CEO Adam Aron opposed tokenised instruments linked to the company’s shares, arguing that AMC had not consented to their issuance. Tenev responded that Robinhood continued to support Stock Tokens and that companies do not control all third-party financial products that use their shares as an underlying reference. The dispute itself demonstrated just how new this market remains and how many questions still need to be resolved regarding the rights of issuers, investors, and creators of tokenised products.
How Robinhood Is Really Changing Trading
The main change Tenev is promoting is not that Robinhood is simply putting a stock ticker on the blockchain. The company is attempting to separate economic exposure to an asset from the traditional infrastructure used to own it.
If this concept becomes mainstream, investors may in the future care less about which particular exchange a share is traded on and which depository services it. At the centre of the user experience would be a digital wallet containing cryptocurrencies, stocks, funds, and other tokenised assets simultaneously.
This is a far more radical idea than simply extending trading hours. Tenev is effectively attempting to make blockchain a new settlement and distribution layer for traditional finance.
At the same time, developments in 2025–2026 have also demonstrated the limits of the current stage. A Robinhood tokenised stock is not yet equivalent to the stock itself: investors primarily receive economic exposure, while their legal rights depend on the specific structure of the product. The disputes involving OpenAI and AMC demonstrated this distinction particularly clearly.
Robinhood is therefore not yet replacing the traditional stock market. The company is building a parallel infrastructure capable of gradually taking over some of its functions. Vlad Tenev’s strategy is precisely to make this boundary virtually invisible over time: traditional assets should acquire the properties of cryptocurrencies, while blockchain should evolve from a separate financial market into the technological foundation of ordinary investing.
