Do you still remember the chaos with GameStop from five years ago? It was a painful lesson for many, but according to Vlad Tenev, the head of Robinhood, it was primarily a warning signal: the current financial system is an open-air museum. Tenev doesn’t bite his tongue and says it straight – if we don’t want a repeat of trade blocking, we must focus on full tokenization of assets.
No more waiting for transfers. We want “here and now”
This all coincides with the fifth anniversary of the “meme action craze.” You probably remember those absurd jumps when GME shot up from a measly $17 to a sky-high $483. Then Robinhood (under pressure from the clearinghouses) had to turn off the “buy” button. Effect? The anger of millions of people and extensive explanations before Congress. Tenev believes that the culprit was not himself, but the archaic T+2 model. Two days of waiting for transaction settlement in the age of the Internet? This actually sounds like a joke that turned into a bottleneck at a crucial moment.
Sure, the US market recently switched to the T+1 system, reducing posting times to one day. But for Tenev it’s just powdering a dead body. Because what about weekends? What about holidays? Capital stands still, risk increases, and the system rests when trade is not sleeping. Solution? Tokenization, i.e. transferring everything to the blockchain. Thanks to this, we could trade 24/7, without unnecessary intermediaries and looking at the clock.
If we put smart contracts to work, financial security would release immediately. Brokers would not be afraid of sudden spikes in volatility because the money would be “visible” in the system in real time. It’s simply a reliable technology that would finally catch up with the ambitions of modern investors.
Are these just dreams?
Of course, not everything is that simple. What stands in the way is the SEC, which firmly sticks to the principle: “digital or paper – the law is the same.” For many companies, these strict regulations are an impenetrable wall.
In addition, there are the voices of skeptics, such as Musheer Ahmed, who point out Tenev’s past mistakes. They claim that the problem in 2021 was not technology, but simply Robinhood’s lack of money in the treasury and poor risk management. Others somehow managed without blocking trade.
Still, Robinhood has no intention of standing still. They are pushing themselves in Europe, messing with DeFi protocols and believing that global tokenization is the only way. Is this enough for us to forget about the GameStop crisis? Time will tell, but one thing is certain – Tenev put everything on one card.
