Tokenization of real world assets is an unstoppable ‘freight train’ coming to major markets: Robinhood CEO
Vlad Tenev, chief executive officer of Robinhood Markets Inc., during the Token2049 conference in Singapore, on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The tokenization of real-world assets, from stocks to real estate, will spread to financial markets around the world, according to Robinhood Markets Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev.
“Tokenization is like a freight train. It can’t be stopped, and eventually it’s going to eat the entire financial system,” Tenev told a panel at a crypto conference in Singapore on Wednesday.
“I think most major markets will have some framework in the next five years,” he said, though he added that reaching 100% could take more than a decade.
A tokenized asset is a digital representation of a real-world asset, like stocks, bonds, or commodities, that can be recorded and traded on a blockchain or distributed ledger.
In June, Robinhood began offering more than 200 tokenized U.S. stocks to customers in the European Union, giving them a new way to gain exposure to the underlying assets. The move sent its stock surging to a then-record high.
“I think it will become the default way to get exposure to U.S. stocks outside the U.S.,” Tenev said.
He expects the practice to gain traction once there is greater licensing and regulatory clarity in more jurisdictions.
“I think that will come, starting in Europe, but then expanding to the rest of the world,” he said.
On the other hand, Tenev expects the U.S. to be among the last economies to actually fully tokenize, due to what he calls the greater sticking power of the financial infrastructure.
The crypto industry has long predicted that a mass tokenization of assets on the blockchain was coming, promising greater market efficiency.
And, along with Robinhood’s launch of tokenized stocks, there’s been more signs this year that real implementation is coming, with institutional giants Morgan Stanley and BlackRock signaling interest.
“I actually think cryptocurrency and traditional finance have been living in two separate worlds for a while, but they’re going to fully merge,” Tenev said at the event.
He cited stablecoins — digital currencies designed not to fluctuate wildly, and pegged to a commodity or a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar — as an early example of a tokenized real-world asset.
“I think that crypto technology has so many advantages over the traditional way we’re doing things that in the future there’s going to be no distinction,” Tenev said.
Firefly’s CEO Jason Kim reacts during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., August 7, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Last week’s liftoff also coincided with President Donald Trump‘s “space superiority” executive order, signed on Friday, that aims to create a permanent U.S. base on the moon.
Investors have also gained more clarity on the future of NASA following a whirlwind drama since Trump won the election.
Last week, the Senate confirmed Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator more than a year after he was first nominated to the position.
Trump withdrew the nomination from the Elon Musk ally earlier this year amid a public fallout, but renominated Isaacman in November.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was tapped to temporarily run the space agency in the interim.
Google parent Alphabet on Monday announced it will acquire Intersect, a data center and energy infrastructure company, for $4.75 billion in cash in addition to the assumption of debt.
Alphabet said Intersect’s operations will remain independent, but that the acquisition will help bring more data center and generation capacity online faster.
In recent years, Google has been embroiled in a fierce competition with artificial intelligence rivals, namely OpenAI, which kick-started the generative AI boom with the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022. OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments to build out the data centers it needs to meet growing demand for its technology.
With its acquisition of Intersect, Google is looking to keep up.
“Intersect will help us expand capacity, operate more nimbly in building new power generation in lockstep with new data center load, and reimagine energy solutions to drive US innovation and leadership,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a statement.
Google already had a minority stake in Intersect from a funding round that was announced last December. In a release at the time, Intersect said its strategic partnership with Google and TPG Rise Climate aimed to develop gigawatts of data center capacity across the U.S., including a $20 billion investment in renewable power infrastructure by the end of the decade.
Alphabet said Monday that Intersect will work closely with Google’s technical infrastructure team, including on the companies’ co-located power site and data center in Haskell County, Texas. Google previously announced a $40 billion investment in Texas through 2027, which includes new data center campuses in the state’s Haskell and Armstrong counties.
Intersect’s operating and in-development assets in California and its existing operating assets in Texas are not part of the acquisition, Alphabet said. Intersect’s existing investors including TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Greenbelt Capital Partners will support those assets, and they will continue to operate as an independent company.
Alphabet’s acquisition of Intersect is expected to close in the first half of 2026, but it is still subject to customary closing conditions.
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