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 87 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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.”
Stripe founders asked Robinhood not to tokenize their shares, says Tenev
“I've shared this viewpoint with Patrick and John, and they give me some variant of, oh, well, we're just a small Irish family company. Please don't tokenize my shares.”
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…”
Tenev: Founders want fast capital, not on-chain equity issuance
“Nobody gives a shit about on chain issuance. Like the only place where people are even thinking about on chain issuance is like in your head. What people want is capital as a service.”
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…”
Tenev: Clearing house deposit rules exacerbate volatility during market crises
“The problem is that, you know, when there's volatile events happening in the market, a lot of the brokers actually need that cash the most, right? They need that cash for their business. And you end up having to put larger and larger amounts of money to these …”
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: Tokenization will make private companies, real estate, and art accessible to retail
“The use case that's going to be very powerful even within the US where we actually have decent access through Robinhood and other things to US stocks is illiquid assets that Actually have not been successfully made tradable or accessible to retail like private…”
Tenev: Retail private market access fails due to adverse selection
“The problem that's happened in private markets in general is The best companies have lots of options. They can raise money from anywhere. So they sort of like don't consider retail. They don't consider retail. And that leads to this adverse selection problem w…”
Tenev: Robinhood intends to tokenize early-stage private startup equity
“My intent would, it would be to go as low as possible.”
Vlad Tenev: Stablecoins have obsoleted American Express traveler's checks
“They basically obsoleted American Express travelers checks, which, you know, foreigners and countries with depreciating currencies would like stockpile these things to keep their money.”
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: Revolut is more impressive than Chime due to product velocity
“I think I'm more impressed by Revolut. You know, Revolut's got product velocity, international scale strong founder, you know, impressive guy.”
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: 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 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.”
Vlad Tenev: AI reasoning models will start replacing knowledge workers within years
“And so I think you will see that in the next couple of years, really really start taking off and good products. Have recently become possible with like the latest models that can reason and make better decisions. The models are likely going to get better and b…”
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: 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.”
Tenev: The shift toward direct individual retail investing is permanent
“I think it's a permanent shift. I think there's a movement in this country that has started and is continuing to have more of the investing done by individuals directly.”
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: 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: 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: 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.”
Tenev: Retail stock buying driven by industry growth, not meme speculation
“People are buying these stocks generally for a very different reason than, you know a meme coin, for example, or even GameStop back in 2021. I think they legitimately believe that these are going to be like gigantic industries.”
Tenev: Stock tokens will become the primary non-US access to US assets
“In the same way, I think stock tokens will become the best way to get exposure to US stocks and other assets.”
Tenev: OpenAI Structure Relies on Profit Units Rather Than Traditional Shares
“OpenAI doesn't have shares. They're a nonprofit. So they have profit participation units and convertible interest securities that give shares upon a successful conversion to a for-profit.”
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…”
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: 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: 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.”
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…”
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: Great art must alienate people to be memorable
“Good art almost like alienates as many people as it Makes really happy. So if you're not like alienating anyone, probably everyone just feels somewhat neutral and it's not going to be memorable.”
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.”
Vlad Tenev received crisis advice from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Benioff
“You know, I never talked to Elon Musk before, but he kind of wanted to give me some advice on how to handle the situation. I talked to Zuck, Mark Benioff.”
Tenev: Paul Graham's 'Founder Mode' essay is vague like a horoscope
“My take on it was, I think it's a little bit like a horoscope in the sense that it was so vague in general. That everyone kind of thinks that it's relevant to them.”
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: Capital markets access should replace homeownership as the American dream
“I wrote a piece one time about how investing and access to capital markets is like the, should be the real American dream. Everyone should be doing it like they were talking about home ownership decades prior.”
Vlad Tenev: Real AI businesses replace existing paid human services cheaply
“I think to me, if there is right now an existing market of people paying a human to do a service for them that AI could replicate at much lower cost, I think that's a real business.”
Tenev: Remote work will not rapidly replace in-person collaboration
“Humans have been like building relationships and working together in person for thousands of years, and I don't think that that's gonna go away instantaneously through technology. I think that that's a, it's a pretty high bar to kind of declare that the domina…”
Tenev: Wealth inequality is largely driven by the retail investing gap
“Inequality can largely be explained by the investing gap. The wealthy invest their money, and that has compounded historically at very, very high rates.”
Tenev: Congressional hearings fail to educate the public on market mechanics
“I just can't believe that that's like the best forum to educate either the public or our representatives on what's going on.”