Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on tokenizing private companies, changing the SEC, and Frank Slootman

Vlad Tenev joins John Collison to discuss Bulgarian hyperinflation, Robinhood Banking, details from the GameStop saga—including advice from Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk, payment for order flow economics and Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys, his approach to leadership through the Frank Slootman framework, and how he would change the SEC.

Full episode transcript on Substack: https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/robinhood-ceo-vlad-tenev-makes-his

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(00:58) Hyperinflation in Bulgaria

(04:07) Stablecoins 

(05:41) Home country bias in investing

(06:59) Robinhood’s origins

(11:23) What the book Flash Boys got wrong

(16:11) Options vs. equities

(17:38) Robinhood Gold

(19:34) Robinhood Banking 

(22:04) GameStop advice from Benioff, Zuck, and Elon

(26:40) Impact of retail investors on capital markets

(31:21) Where retail dollars are coming from

(32:10) The gamification narrative

(34:17) Tokenizing private companies

(41:57) Vlad makes his pitch to tokenize Stripe

(45:00) Prediction markets: tennis, the pope, and AI

(49:26) If Vlad ran the SEC

(51:15) How does Robinhood ship so fast?

(52:38) Remote work and Robinhood’s founder community 

(55:39) “What would Frank Slootman do?”

(57:32) Active traders

(59:46) Killing Robinhood’s cash card

(01:02:36) Harmonic and mathematical superintelligence