Vlad Tenev, chief govt officer of Robinhood Markets Inc., through the Token2049 convention in Singapore, on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025.
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The tokenization of real-world property, from shares to actual property, will unfold to monetary markets world wide, in response to Robinhood Markets Chief Government Officer Vlad Tenev.
“Tokenization is sort of a freight prepare. It could’t be stopped, and finally it may eat all the monetary system,” Tenev informed a panel at a crypto convention in Singapore on Wednesday.
“I feel most main markets may have some framework within the subsequent 5 years,” he stated, although he added that reaching 100% may take greater than a decade.
A tokenized asset is a digital illustration of a real-world asset, like shares, bonds, or commodities, that may be recorded and traded on a blockchain or distributed ledger.
In June, Robinhood started providing greater than 200 tokenized U.S. shares to prospects within the European Union, giving them a brand new technique to achieve publicity to the underlying property. The transfer despatched its inventory surging to a then-record excessive.
“I feel it would develop into the default technique to get publicity to U.S. shares exterior the U.S.,” Tenev stated.
He expects the observe to achieve traction as soon as there’s higher licensing and regulatory readability in additional jurisdictions.
“I feel that can come, beginning in Europe, however then increasing to the remainder of the world,” he stated.
Alternatively, Tenev expects the U.S. to be among the many final economies to truly totally tokenize, because of what he calls the higher sticking energy of the monetary infrastructure.
The crypto business has lengthy predicted {that a} mass tokenization of property on the blockchain was coming, promising higher market effectivity.
And, together with Robinhood’s launch of tokenized shares, there’s been extra indicators this 12 months that actual implementation is coming, with institutional giants Morgan Stanley and BlackRock signaling curiosity.
“I really assume cryptocurrency and conventional finance have been residing in two separate worlds for some time, however they are going to totally merge,” Tenev stated on the occasion.
He cited stablecoins — digital currencies designed to not fluctuate wildly, and pegged to a commodity or a fiat forex just like the U.S. greenback — as an early instance of a tokenized real-world asset.
“I feel that crypto expertise has so many benefits over the standard means we’re doing issues that sooner or later there’s going to be no distinction,” Tenev stated.
