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Person

Vlad Tenev

Co-founder and CEO of Robinhood Markets, a commission-free trading app expanding into crypto, options, and blockchain products.

Known aliases

  • Tenev
  • Vladimir Tenev
  • vladtenev
  • @vladtenev

Current stories

investConfirmed5 publishers

Robinhood puts $25 million of company capital into bitcoin, about 0.025% of its market value

Robinhood has added $25 million of bitcoin to its balance sheet, crypto chief Johann Kerbrat said, a stake worth about 0.025% of its market value. The company's larger tie to the asset runs through trading, where August crypto volume reached $17.5 billion.

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 25%
Operator
Operator 22%
Investor
Investor 53%

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption25
Hype gap+15
Incentives60
Confidence65
investConfirmed11 publishers

Robinhood picks its own Bitstamp over Lighter for US crypto perpetuals

Robinhood is routing its new US crypto perpetuals, with up to 10x leverage, through its own Bitstamp exchange instead of Lighter. Lighter's LIT token fell about 17% within the hour, a loss Bankless calls a near-term repricing that gets tested once US rules admit decentralized venues.

Perspective Coverage

11 publishers
Builder
Builder 21%
Operator
Operator 35%
Investor
Investor 44%

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption25
Hype gap+40
Incentives70
Confidence60
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Robinhood hands its retail traders AI agents that run strategies in separate accounts

Robinhood says more than 150,000 customers have opened AI agent trading accounts that generate roughly 30 million automated actions a day. The agents' guardrail is a manual-approval default that customers can adjust. Robinhood is setting that default as the company pushes toward trading that never stops.

Publishers:news.bitcoin.com

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption40
Hype gap+30
Incentives75
Confidence40
scienceOne report1 publisher

Robinhood plans to sell US retail traders crypto perpetuals with up to 10x leverage

Robinhood said eligible US customers will trade eight crypto perpetual futures in its app within months, with up to 10x leverage on bitcoin and ether. The product brings leverage US retail traders mostly found on offshore exchanges into a mainstream American brokerage.

Publishers:cryptotimes.io

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+35
Incentives65
Confidence40
investOne report1 publisher

SEC hands onchain equities to whoever can pass dividends and votes through

The SEC's Sept. 17 order lets venues trade tokenized stocks in permissioned AMM pools without registering as exchanges, if the token passes the underlying's dividends and votes to the holder. Robinhood's 200 tokens are Jersey debt paper.

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption34
Hype gap+18
Incentives70
Confidence55
investOne report1 publisher

Robinhood spends its new underwriting licence on the last seat in Oura's syndicate

Oura's S-1 lists 18 underwriters and Robinhood is the last of them, on a deal seeking up to $3bn at more than $16bn. It is the first use of a licence the brokerage received in June 2026, and what it buys is a say in allocation.

Reality

Evidence38
Adoption24
Hype gap+32
Incentives62
Confidence44
investConfirmed3 publishers

Robinhood's stock token bundles AMC's share price with Robinhood's own credit risk

The thing AMC wants withdrawn is debt issued by a Jersey subsidiary, so the buyer holds a cinema chain's price and Robinhood's solvency in one position, and the SEC line separating the two tokenisation routes binds nobody.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 33%
Operator
Operator 20%
Investor
Investor 47%

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption52
Hype gap+28
Incentives66
Confidence58
buildOne report1 publisher

Standing authority on Robinhood's MCP server places orders with no per-trade confirmation

The brokerage's own disclosures put responsibility for a misread instruction on the customer and say Robinhood does not supervise the connected agent, which leaves the agent provider's exposure undocumented.

Publishers:runtimewire.com

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption38
Hype gap+25
Incentives68
Confidence55
investOne report1 publisher

AMC's Aron demands Robinhood halt stock tokens tracking 190-plus companies without issuer consent

Robinhood's Stock Tokens are Jersey-issued debt that pays a share's price and none of its rights, which is why its chief legal officer, an SEC commissioner until 2015, says it will not stop, and why AMC's route to Washington looks narrow.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption35
Hype gap+25
Incentives78
Confidence55
productOne report1 publisher

Robinhood's AMC token is its own Jersey debt with someone else's ticker on the label

Adam Aron wants trading stopped and has AMC's securities lawyers on it, but the obligor on the instrument is Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, so the holder's contract was never with AMC and the demand letter has no counterparty to name.

Publishers:gizmodo.com

Reality

Evidence64
Adoption38
Hype gap+32
Incentives78
Confidence58
investOne report1 publisher

Ponce collected half again the fees of the Robinhood chain it runs on

Weekly meme coin volume on Robinhood's layer-2 rose to $3.5bn in late August, and the Solana base that figure is measured against sat near $42bn in both weeks, so the gain is share taken, not a market growing.

Publishers:en.sedaily.com

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption58
Hype gap+30
Incentives68
Confidence45
investOne report1 publisher

Robinhood dares AMC to litigate the tokens its Jersey unit issues as debt

The tokens are notes from Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited that pay off AMC's share price and carry no rights against AMC, which leaves Adam Aron's counsel hunting for a trademark theory rather than a securities one.

Publishers:decrypt.co

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption38
Hype gap+30
Incentives75
Confidence55
investOne report1 publisher

Robinhood's custodian negotiates a separate custody price with every RIA it recruits

TradePMR will not quote from a rate card, and it reopens each negotiated rate once a year, because the line Robinhood is underwriting is net deposits from the advisor channel rather than custody fees. The referral volume that would settle it is undisclosed.

Reality

Evidence44
Adoption31
Hype gap+24
Incentives76
Confidence49
investOne report1 publisher

Robinhood Chain's $85M day was 78% straight stocks, and 72% of the book sits in one Uniswap version

Tokenized equities did $66.6 million of the record Aug. 25 print while memecoin pairs fell to 12% of flow. The composition change is real. The dollar displacement is not yet proven.

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption54
Hype gap+14
Incentives58
Confidence41
investOne report1 publisher

Robinhood's own blockchain is a revenue-mix problem wearing infrastructure clothes

Crypto trading revenue fell 30% quarter over quarter in Q1 2026. Robinhood Chain and 190-odd tokenized US stocks are the replacement engine, not a side project.

Reality

Evidence32
Adoption44
Hype gap+38
Incentives74
Confidence36

Earlier coverage