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 28 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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: Robinhood was not pressured by outside forces to halt trading
“This wasn't, you know, a value judgment or some kind of moral stance and we weren't pressured into doing it by anything other than our regulatory deposit requirements.”
Tenev: Robinhood restricted buying in 13 stocks to meet deposit requirements
“We just had to do what we did to meet our deposit requirements, because if we didn't do that, we would be in violation. And the consequences of that could have been much, much worse than simply halting buying in the 13 stocks.”
Tenev: Robinhood's $3.4B raise provided liquidity, not a deposit bailout
“We met all of our deposit requirements. The new capital that we raised, the 3.4 billion, wasn't to meet our ongoing deposit requirements. We had met them and in order to relax them and eventually unrestrict them, we needed to raise some more capital and eventu…”
Tenev: Financial products open to high-net-worth individuals should be retail-accessible
“Generally speaking, I think if it's available to wealthy people, high net worth individuals, it should be made available to retail as well.”
Tenev: Payment for order flow enabled commission-free trading for retail investors
“Payment for order flow enabled commission free trading, right? It helps cover the costs of the business that that, that leads to our ability to offer commission free trading. And moreover, it allows smaller investors to participate.”
Tenev: Robinhood was first to tokenize OpenAI and SpaceX shares
“We were actually, I think, the first to tokenize OpenAI and SpaceX, and we made that available to our retail customers in Europe in the form of a giveaway”
Tenev: Robinhood faced enforcement actions and a Wells notice under Biden
“Last administration, we were playing a lot of defense. It was just sort of like one enforcement action, and we had a Wells notice in all aspects of Our business were sort of under assault”
Tenev: AI productivity gains will cause significant labor force disruption
“I don't think you're gonna get there without some significant labor force disruption.”
Tenev: Incumbent financial firms lack top engineering talent and speed
“They don't have the best engineering teams. They can't move very fast. And they can't hire the best talent”
Tenev: Almost every broker restricted buying during the GameStop squeeze
“Restricting the buying of securities is something that every, pretty much every broker did to some degree during this week, right?”
Tenev: Brokers using third-party clearing firms faced identical deposit demands
“Well, I think a lot of the a lot of the other brokers who relied on clearing firms had the same issue, right? You know, there's firms like Apex Clearing which has introducing brokers Cash App, for example, clears through a third party as well, and they all had…”
Tenev: Most Robinhood users do not use leverage or trade options
“Most of our customers don't use leverage. Most of our customers aren't active traders or trading options”
Tenev: Real-time settlement would automatically provide short position transparency
“Well, I think if we migrate to a better settlement infrastructure and move to real-time settlement, you get a lot of that stuff for free, right?”
Tenev: Robinhood shifted to intraday position limits across 50 stocks
“By Friday, we had moved to a much more sophisticated system where intraday we adjust the position limits in it was up to 50 stocks, and we published that on our website.”
Tenev: Robinhood should have provided more detail in trade restriction emails
“I think the automated emails that went out to customers saying your stocks are, you're restricted from buying these stocks probably could have been handled a little bit better. We probably could have offered more detail into that with the foresight that maybe …”
Tenev: The Biden administration never invited Robinhood to the White House
“I mean, just by nature of how many times I've been to Washington the last administration didn't invite me to the White House once. I asked for meetings, and they wouldn't even meet in person.”
Tenev: Harmonic achieved gold-medal AI performance at International Math Olympiad
“And we had a pretty cool result a couple weeks ago where we announced gold medal level performance at the International Math Olympiad, which is the biggest mathematics competition in the world. And I think to my knowledge, we're the only formal model.”
Tenev: Certain stocks in the 2021 trading frenzy had 140% short interest
“Right now you can short sell more stock than the shares that are outstanding, right? So, you know, some of these stocks had a 140% short interest, right? So more, more shares were shorted than actually outstanding.”
Tenev: SEC fine was for order flow disclosures, not gamification
“Yeah, well, so the fine wasn't for gamifying Robin Hood. It was for Payment for order flow and business model related related things. The gamification one is the Massachusetts securities securities one, which is a separate thing.”
Tenev: Replacing PFOF with trading subscriptions would harm smaller investors
“That model would work, but the consequence would be smaller investors would, ah, would not benefit, right?”
Tenev: Blockchain's top value is democratizing illiquid assets
“The most powerful thing is taking inaccessible, illiquid assets and making them available.”
Tenev: Robinhood offers public and private tokenized securities in the EU
“We've made both available to some extent in the EU.”
Tenev: Robinhood cannot currently offer synthetic contracts on private stock
“We can't do that currently and OpenAI in particular is a tricky one,”
Tenev: Robinhood has a live prediction market on upcoming IPOs
“So for example, we have a prediction market live on the platform now about which companies are going to IPO.”
Tenev: Robinhood holds over $250 billion in assets on platform
“We've got over a quarter trillion assets on the platform already”
Tenev: Robinhood options trading cannot be executed on margin
“Number one, you can't trade options on margin. So options are all fully paid for, right?”