The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 109 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Tenev denies Robinhood colluded with hedge funds to restrict meme stock trading
“The idea that somehow the most wrong thing was this allegation of collusion that we're somehow colluding with hedge funds that we have no business relationship with to somehow restrict buying of these stocks. Yeah, I think that was just wrong.”
Tenev: Robinhood enabled private stock tokenization without target company opt-in
“And so I think it's important for the tokenization mechanism to work. Without the opt-in of the companies that, that are being tokenized. And I think that's actually the innovation that we've been able to drive. Like we can, we figured out how to make this wor…”
Harry Stebbings: Most retail investors on Robinhood are incompetent
“I think most of the people who invest in there are incompetent and shouldn't be given dollars. This will definitely be taken out, no doubt. I think this is like, you know, you're empowering people who should not be investing. They do not understand public mark…”
Vlad Tenev: Robinhood received a $3B deposit demand during GameStop saga
“We got this we got this bill in the automated clearinghouse system for three billion dollars.”
Tenev: Preventing retail investors from selling would have caused street riots
“If you have a customer who's unable to close their positions at the all time high, As bad as this was, not allowing customers to close their positions would have been much worse. I mean, there would have been, like, rioting on the streets if we had not allowed…”
Revolut Will Outvalue Robinhood in Its Next Funding Round
“It's our fintech provider, Revolut, which has stolen the show, and I think on the next round will be considerably more valuable than Robinhood.”
Tenev: Robinhood will offer home cash delivery using on-demand logistics
“We're going to solve that problem by combining the logistics of on-demand delivery with all the work that we're doing in finance. And you'll, you'll get cash delivered to your house.”
Tenev: Robinhood intends to tokenize early-stage private startup equity
“My intent would, it would be to go as low as possible.”
Tenev: Prediction markets are a form of investing, not gambling
“Some people consider it gambling, so you have the whole, like, is it gambling or is it investing controversy that we're continuing to contend with? It's sort of the, Bane of our existence to some degree. I mean, I believe it's investing.”
Tenev: AI generates the majority of new code at Robinhood
“We've moved from, you know, GitHub Copilot, which is an auto-complete system, to Cursor, and now things like Windsurf, where, I mean, nearly all of the code is, is written by AI, and the adoption rate within engineering for us is, You know, close to a hundred …”
Tenev: Allegations of Robinhood colluding with Citadel were disproved
“People thought there was this whole collusion narrative with Citadel that ended up being disproved”
Tenev: Robinhood reversed its remote-first policy after immediate regret
“We announced that we were a remote first company. I immediately regretted it and then we had to pull that back and ask people to come to the office.”
Tenev: Robinhood US retail crypto volume is close to Coinbase
“Well, on retail in the US we're kind of like close to the same size as Coinbase. We charge a lot less, so we have less revenue. But in terms of volumes and retail volumes, It's pretty close particularly if you look at supported coins.”
Hecker: Trade Republic grew users and assets while Robinhood lost users in 2022
“So they are churning monthly active users, they're churning assets, they're churning activity. At the same time, TraderPublic has growing active numbers of customers, has growing assets, and has new savings plans. And by the way, nobody is quitting their savin…”
Scott Sandell: Free is the most powerful business model in the world
“This fit into our overarching theme, you know, that the most powerful model in the world is free, and they were going to be disruptive because they were offering something of real value, you know, stock trading where commissions were seven or eight dollars a t…”
Ribbit Capital wired Robinhood $500 million in emergency liquidity in one day
“We were able to figure out terms and get the liquidity to wire them half a billion dollars that day.”
Tenev: Mickey Malka committed $500 million to Robinhood in a five-minute call
“I guess the number one person that, if I had to pick just one, it would be our mutual friend, Mickey Malka, basically agreed to fund our initial five hundred million dollars with five minute phone call.”
Tenev: Retail investing is now as culturally relevant as sports and music
“Investing is as culturally relevant as music and the arts and sports”
Tenev: Retail investors net sold GameStop before Robinhood restricted buying
“With GME, according to CNBC, retail was a net seller of GME Monday through Wednesday, which by the way is before Robinhood put in place the buying restriction. So Monday through Wednesday, as the stock was increasing, retail overall was net selling it.”
Revolut Is Strategically Better Positioned Long-Term Than Robinhood
“I, I'm a Robin Hood user because I'm in the US, so I'm going to say Robin Hood, but I do think Revolut is very well positioned. Honestly, it's really hard. Maybe Revolut. It's a close, it's a, that's a close one.”
Robinhood's Horizontal Scaling Blocked Global Expansion
“They grew their business and they were able to saturate the U S market. But they weren't able to go global.”
Mignot: Index sold Robinhood shares lower but retains a large stake
“We were a very large investor in in Robinhood and we sold you know we sold quite a bit at a lower price than where it is today. You know, we still have a large stake”
Tenev: Robinhood stablecoin interest products will generate significant revenue
“Well, if we as we get stablecoin out, Crypto will have that as well. You'll be able to earn interest on your stable coins, and that'll be a significant business.”
Tenev: Robinhood uses stablecoins to settle weekend crypto trades
“But now with stable coins, we can just send you the dollars over the weekend. They instantly get to our counterparties. They can send the crypto back. Problem solved. So that, that's a real use case, and that's led to us adopting it.”
Tenev: Robinhood will enable 24/7 token trading via Bitstamp and direct DeFi self-custody
“And the second phase is we put these tokens on Bitstamp. Our exchange. And so then you can trade the tokens directly against other cryptos and also dollars. And that needs stage one because we need to have a supply of a significant number of these tokens minte…”
Vlad Tenev: Being a public company CEO is enjoyable, not a nuisance
“I think it's great because I think we've flipped, in my head at least, from thinking about all the public company stuff like earnings and all of that from being a nuisance to being just a fun opportunity to connect with our community of shareholders and retail…”
Tenev: Robinhood's internal customer support AI beats dedicated AI startups
“I think we're best in class there actually, even, even stronger than the like dedicated customer support AI companies in terms of what we've done there.”
Tenev: Robinhood's end state includes checking accounts for paychecks
“I do think that the end state of Robinhood involves the current account as well. Like we have to get people's paycheck. It's just easier that way if you can Have everything go through Robin Hood.”
Tenev: Chime targets paycheck-to-paycheck customers who do not invest
“Chime we don't butt into very much either because they're targeting sort of paycheck to paycheck customers. Their customers aren't really investing.”
Tenev: Catering to active traders was Robinhood's main turnaround driver
“And I think that was actually the number one reason behind our business turnaround. It's realizing that that was actually the core of our business, and if we had to, and we needed to invest in it in order to have resources to do other things well.”
Vlad Tenev: Robinhood's market valuation dropped below cash reserves in 2022
“Yeah, I mean, I want to say being public through twenty-twenty-two, seeing our stock go from, I don't know what it was in twenty-twenty-one, irrationally high perhaps, but it was still high after we went public, down to being worth below cash was a very-”
Tenev: Robinhood has more Millennial and Gen Z users than competitors combined
“And we've got more millennial customers than our main brokerage competitors put together. Same with Gen Z.”
Tenev: Robinhood's best products spark internally, not from customer research
“I think the initial idea, the spark came from within and it didn't come from customer research or a lot of feedback, but I think customers play a much bigger role in refining the idea and actually like we ping pong ideas off of customers.”
Vlad Tenev: Robinhood Should Be Willing to Alienate More People
“I think we could probably alienate more.”
Rabois: Passed on Robinhood seed after Khosla banned seed board seats
“I had already, like, locked in a turn sheet to lead the series seat for Robin Hood chilling at 20 post, which was pretty expensive, but they came back and Really wanted me to join the board in the seed round, and this was in maybe my second year at KB, so I as…”
Robinhood raised $3.5 billion in five days
“You know, they had to raise a ton of money in a short period of time, and without missing a beat, I think they raised 3.5 billion dollars in five days start to finish.”
Rick Yang: Robinhood spent two and a half years building tech before public launch
“This company spent two plus years prior to actually launching to the public of just building, just heads down building. And this was done during a time where Everybody was really adopting that lean startup mentality of like launch first and then build and iter…”
Robinhood's early operating cost structure was 1/35th of E-Trade's
“And they came back and said, yeah, pretty much our cost structure is about one 35th of E-Trade.”
Sandell: Robinhood's market potential exceeds Charles Schwab
“Well, I looked at it from the beginning, and I said it should be at least as big as Charles Schwab. That was my reference point in terms of a business, but as we got into it, I realized it could be much bigger.”
Sandell: Robinhood poached executives from Facebook more often than losing to them
“And when we would talk about how hiring was going for this position or that position, it was more likely that they were poaching some senior executive from Facebook rather than losing a competition to get somebody from Facebook.”
E-Trade spent $800 to acquire a customer while Robinhood spent zero
“E-Trade was spending, like, 800 dollars for a new customer. Robinhood was spending zero.”
Chris Sacca day-traded student loans to $12M before losing it all
“So I very famously took my student loan checks for law school, told the school they hadn't shown up, cash them, and use them to day trade in the market. And so this is one of the reasons why I get so nervous about what I see in the Robin Hood phenomenon. You k…”
International Expansion Without Home Market Leadership Is a Losing Strategy
“Being number five for a business, like being the number five Robin Hood in Brazil, and then expanding to Mexico to be the number six in Mexico, Is not going to be a winning business model. You would much rather be the number one in your country and then expand…”
Tenev: Robinhood's clearinghouse VAR charge increased tenfold in a few days
“You looked at what the VAR charge was on Monday versus Wednesday, and it was something like a TEDx increase just in a couple of days.”
Tenev predicts Robinhood will be global and ubiquitous in America by 2025
“So I think the Robin hood of five years from now will be global. It will be ubiquitous in the U S if we are successful, it'll kind of shatter the taboos that we have around finance and financial services.”
Bhatt: Robinhood users are 20 to 30 years younger than competitors'
“The consumers that use products like Fidelity, E-Trade, Scottrade, a lot of our competitors, our customers are on average, 20 to 30 years younger than those consumers.”
Robinhood aims to expand globally across four continents within five years
“I would like to see Robin hood become an international financial services company. I would like to see us scale like internet company scale, not like tech or not like financial services companies. I would love to be live across. All of Europe, I would love to …”