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I am Vlad Tennv, the founder of Robin
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Hood.
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We're talking about Robin Hood. The
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stock's more than doubled since its last
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report.
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It stock surged 180% this year after
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nearly doubling in 2024. The
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shares of the trading platform now up
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more than 400% in the last year.
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Glad your presence there speaks volumes.
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Robin Hood Gold, which hit a record 3.5
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million subscribers. Most financial
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services get worse the more money you
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have, but we wanted to kind of invert
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that.
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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
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Robin Hood CEO Vlad Tenner,
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my guy.
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Good to see you, brother.
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Good to see you.
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Good to see you.
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You're the reason Jake Health's here. I
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mean
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I mean it is a great story.
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It's so true. Jake Cal bumbles into
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eight shares of Robin Hood. Lad builds a
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hundred billion dollar companies. It's
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unbelievable.
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I mean people know me for the Uber
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investment which four or $5 million
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valuation. But there's
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When do I flip that?
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Well, yeah, it's going to take a little
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more. I think you got 20x left to go.
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But
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wait, was JL the third or fourth
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investor in Robin Hood? It was $20
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million valuation, but it's a good
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story, I think, because you hadn't
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launched. And we're at Antonio's
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Nutouse. I went for a drink with my
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friend Ado. He brought his college
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roommate, Elon. We're hanging out at
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Antonio's Nut House in Palo Alto. Rest
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in peace, Antonio.
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Keep dropping these names. One second.
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So Vlad comes over. We we Vlad and I
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knew each other a little bit. And Vlad
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pitches me on this idea and he says,
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"Um, I'm a quant." I said, "What's a
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quant?" He said, "Quant analysis." I
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said, "Yeah, I heard of it. Um, hit me
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with the idea." And then he goes, "Is
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that Elon Musk?" I said, "Yeah, just hit
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me with the idea. I know you got a
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startup." He says, "Well, I I want to
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get
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uh this generation, these millennials,
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these Gen Z's. I want to get them to
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trade stocks." I said, "Love it. They
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don't care about like getting a driver's
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license. They they don't they're still
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on their mom and dad's Netflix. You're
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going to try to get people who don't
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care about the future to trade stocks?"
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He says, "Yeah." I said, "What's the
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business model?" I said, "This is the
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best part. We're going to let him trade
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for free." So I said, "Okay, let me
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repeat this back to you, kid. You want
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to get a group of people who don't have
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any interest in the future to trade
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stocks and then
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we have 30 seconds.
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You're going to make money. You're going
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to make money.
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Thank you, Vlad."
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I said, "I'm in. I'm in."
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Not only that, but he said, "This is
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probably the best idea you'll ever
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have."
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I did say that to him, too. I was like,
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"This is the best idea. What if it
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works?" And here we are 10 years later.
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what's worked.
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And last week you were added to the S&P
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500.
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I was
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last week or yesterday? Two days ago.
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It was Friday.
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I mean, what a huge accomplishment.
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Thank you.
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I mean, I think I think it was cuz I
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rejected you for a job, right?
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It you heard about that.
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This is a series.
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Thank you guys for upgrading me, by the
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way. I guess that that's been the best
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part of being added to the S&P going
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from just a Jason interview to to the
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whole squad.
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We were doing the rehearsal yesterday
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and everyone wanted to do the the
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interview, so we said, "Let's all do it
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together."
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Why don't we all get in here? Can I uh
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let's let's maybe start. So look, you've
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built an incredible business. Um there's
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a part of it that looks like the you
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know what comes after the Erades of the
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world etc. But there's an enormous other
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part of your business and there's all
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these emergent paths. I want to just
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start by double clicking in something
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that you announced a few months ago in
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France and maybe you want to talk us
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through it what the goal was. You got a
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lot of support but you got a lot of
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blowback as well. There was a lot of
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people that were like, "Wow, this is a
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little too disruptive tokenizing these
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stocks, putting them on the blockchain."
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Maybe talk us through the business and
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then just double click on that narrow
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thing so we can understand what you're
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up to.
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Yeah. So, we had an event in in the
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south of France that we called to catch
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a token. And the idea behind that event
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was we wanted to show what Robin Hood,
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the app, the platform would look like if
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it was built from the ground up on
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crypto technology. So what that looked
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like was stocks on blockchains. Uh
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obviously we added a bunch of
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cryptonnative features like pers. Um we
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launched in now 31 countries. And then
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uh we also wanted to demonstrate to the
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US what the power of putting traditional
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financial services on blockchains was.
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And to me, I think a lot of people talk
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about 24/7 stock trading, instant
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settlement, these things that do have
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real value, but I think the most
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powerful thing is taking inaccessible,
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illlquid assets and making them
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available. And and so we we were
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actually, I think, the first to tokenize
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OpenAI and SpaceX and we made that
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available to our retail customers in
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Europe in the form of a giveaway. and
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and that was very very exciting, you
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know, not not without its controversy,
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but I felt like it was such a powerful
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thing.
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How do you do it? How did you enable
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that?
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It's actually very similar to uh
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stablecoin in a way. So, if you're a
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stable coin issuer, and this it's a
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little bit oversimplifying, but you can
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think of it as we keep some dollars or
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treasuries in a bucket over here. uh we
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mint and burn tokens against that bucket
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but back at one to one and the tokens
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can actually trade publicly on a variety
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of of blockchains. So it's just
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extending that token that that
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tokenization concept from stable coins
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to uh public and and private.
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So you had to go and secure your own
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block of SpaceX and OpenAI stock and
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and then put it somewhere. Were the
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companies okay with it? Um, it depends.
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Uh, I think I think that, uh, I'll say a
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couple of things. Um, I think a lot of
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people are okay with it in principle,
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but if you're a company and you're
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focused on your mission like OpenAI is,
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and you hear about some new thing, uh,
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it's kind of a distraction. So, I I
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don't really blame them for tokeniz
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tokenization or private access not being
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their their top priority, but I did want
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to be the first to tokenize open AI. So,
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uh
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did Sam give you a call?
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Uh I have had a couple conversations
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with with Sam before and after.
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Um cuz yeah, he's a spicy individual.
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What was his take? Did he tell you to
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stop?
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Um I think that actually uh I I'd like
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to think we get along quite well. I
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think he understood why we were doing
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it. Again, the distraction aspect when
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they have so much going on uh is is a
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real thing. But at the end of the day,
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where do you take it from here? Are you
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going to go and get 50, 100 of these
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well-known private companies? Is that
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the goal? Is it every private company?
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How like what do you do from here to
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build on top of it?
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Yeah. So, we we've been hard at work
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trying to figure out how to do it in the
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US. I think that's that's uh everyone's
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interested in that since the France
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announcement. obviously expanding what
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we do in Europe as well and there will
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probably be different mechanisms in the
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US and and in Europe at least for some
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time but uh yeah you you should expect
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that we go bigger and deeper into the
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space and have plenty of things to do in
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the future.
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I'm curious what the relationship has
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been with the new administration. the
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last administration, you know, was not
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very pro- innovation, crypto, and now
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you got David uh running that
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specifically. How has the change in the
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administration changed how you look at
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innovation at Robin Hood? And then Sax,
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I'm sure you have some follow-up
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questions here.
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Yeah, it's been very positive. I mean,
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just uh by nature of how many times I've
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been to Washington, uh the last
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administration
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didn't invite me to the White House
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once. Uh, I asked for meetings and they
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wouldn't even meet in person. They were
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all working remotely uh until I think
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2023, early 2024. Um,
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it was funny how remote work kind of
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broke down along political lines. It's
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sort of like the the Republicans wanted
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to get back into the office.
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I think you're referring to remote work
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as not working.
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I mean, that is uh I wasn't going to say
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it, but uh yeah. Um,
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yeah, it was funny how that works out,
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but it's it's been very positive. I
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mean, last administration,
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we were playing a lot of defense. It was
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just sort of like one enforcement action
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and we had a wells notice and all
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aspects of our business were sort of
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under assault. So I think the most
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direct thing was when that went away, we
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had to think, okay, well there the
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administration now wants to work with us
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rather than just trying to attack us
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from all these angles. And for a while
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we didn't even know how to operate in
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that environment because we were just
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completely not used to it.
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Yeah, you were on your
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Have you met with Elizabeth Warren?
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Uh I have not. No, I just receive
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letters from time to time. But
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she really But she hates you. Well, I
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told me personally, she really can't
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take it.
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No, the reason the reason I asked is
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what is the core motivation of the idea
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of we need to enforce, we need to kind
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of restrict, we need to prohibit. Is it
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consumer protection that the belief is
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that systems like yours that are more
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open, more accessible, more usable, more
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consumers will trade more and
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potentially lose money and therefore
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they have to try and play a role in
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restricting consumer access to these
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markets and these marketplaces. and
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that's what they're mo ultimately kind
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of driving towards or do you think that
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there's something more vested
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interestwise that's motivating?
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I mean I think I think there's probably
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both. Certainly consumer protection is
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the stated reason but obviously these
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folks have funders and backers and lots
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of interests. I mean there's powerful
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there's powerful financial services
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companies in the state of Massachusetts.
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So, I don't know what's happening behind
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the scenes, but you know, I do think the
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consumer protection angle is what
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they're kind of
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pulling out. How do you Yeah. How do you
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look at this type of innovation and your
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role at the White House to support it
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and to foster it while still, you know,
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having some rules on the field?
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Well, I think Vlad's uh vision around
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tokenization is very exciting. I like
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you wrote a oped I think it's in the
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Washington Post that I thought was very
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good on this this topic. We now have a
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regulatory framework in place the Genius
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Act which the president signed in July
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that creates um the the the the set of
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rules for stable coins which are just
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tokenized dollars. And like Vlad's
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saying if you can tokenize a dollar you
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can tokenize anything. You just
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basically create a reserve of that asset
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in a secure account at a bank somewhere
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or a broker and then you mint tokens on
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a onetoone basis. So I think it's very
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exciting is there's no reason why we
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can't tokenize. Let's start with public
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securities. I think that's the easy case
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because with public companies there's
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already disclosure requirements. There's
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an abundance of information and anybody
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can buy a public security, right?
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Because of those disclosure
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requirements. Um and the companies don't
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really care who their stockholders are,
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right? I mean because they know that the
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public owns these securities. So what we
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could get right away with tokenized
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securities, public securities is like
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you were saying a 24/7 global
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marketplace uh with instantaneous
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blockchain based settlement and that
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could be really exciting. There's no
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reason why trading has to be on this
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like 9-to-F5 exchange with all this, you
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know, we could enable stocks to trade as
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easily as you, you know, transfer a a
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stable coin. Now the private security
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part is interesting that that is I think
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more complicated because first of all
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the companies like you're saying they do
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care who their shareholders are and they
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do generally restrict those things and
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that's why you probably got the phone
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call from Sam and then the regulators
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care also because there's not as much
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public disclosure. So they there's more
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uh of an impetus to protect the public.
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By the way I'm not saying we can't get
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there on private securities. Um about a
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decade ago a ago I founded
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a startup to tokenize uh real estate
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called Harbor and we were just way too
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far ahead of the curve but that that was
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basically to to um tokenize uh private
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real estate securities. So I think we
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can get there but I think the place to
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start that would be really exciting
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would just be like let's do the public
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securities first because it's easy or
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easier from a regulatory standpoint and
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then we can work our way into private.
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Yeah, it's certainly easier
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technologically. I mean, we we've we've
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made both uh available to some extent in
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the EU. Um I think private could be more
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meaningful long term and I I'll I'll
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tell you why I think so. If you look at
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the technologies that are transforming
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society right now and that we feel so
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optimistic about over the next 5 years,
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it's AI and to some extent, you know,
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space exploration. And I think with AI
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in particular, there's a lot of fear
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right now. I mean, you talk to a random
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person on the street, more than half the
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time, they're a little bit nervous about
00:13:25
what AI is going to do to them. Now,
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imagine the scenario if you know 20 to
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30% of someone's net worth is in AI
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companies. Now, suddenly they're not
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fighting against this thing. They want
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it to succeed because if AI succeeds
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entrepreneurship as a way to let more
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people participate in the boom.
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Yeah. Because I worry about the status
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quo. I mean these AI companies in
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particular are getting into valuations
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of hundreds and hundreds of billions
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with zero retail ownership. And that
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technology could completely disrupt you
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know how normal people live their lives.
00:14:04
And we actually expect it to drive that
00:14:06
sort of disruption because if if you
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look at Cathy's presentation, you know,
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you're talking about negative inflation,
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high GDP growth rates, giant
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productivity improvements. I don't think
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you're going to get there without some
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significant labor force disruption.
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Okay. So what do you need from let's say
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the US government broadly whether it's
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the SEC or whether it's maybe new
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legislation on Capitol Hill what what
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exactly do you need to bring about this
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revolution?
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I think I think uh relaxation of
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accreditation uh standards towards more
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self-certification. you you mentioned uh
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a test. Um I think a test I consider to
00:14:47
be one form of self-certification,
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but the simplest form is just someone
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saying, "I understand the risks. I
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understand I could lose 100% of what I
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put in this investment." You could even
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put like a skull and crossbones.
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No crying in the casino.
00:15:02
Yeah, exactly.
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You could put somebody crying in the
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casino. Yes.
00:15:05
Yeah.
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Literally in the app.
00:15:07
No crying in the casino. I think
00:15:10
I guess I mean the point you're making
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is you can't on the one hand cry for
00:15:14
access and on the other hand cry in the
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casino.
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Exactly.
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Can't do that.
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But the executive order on 401k access I
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think was a step in the right direction.
00:15:23
So we could also ease into it by
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extending that to individual retirement
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accounts which are great short-term
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vehicles and then give it to
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you need a secured interest. Why can't
00:15:34
you just create a synthetic or like a
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fast contract saying if and when open AI
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goes public cuz you can see how many
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shares there are. You know what the
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legal registration of the corporation
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is. Can't you create like a synthetic
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contract that just trades the value of
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the stock and ultimately needs to settle
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at some point after the company goes
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public?
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We can't do that currently. Uh and and
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OpenAI in particular is a tricky one
00:15:56
because yeah, pick any other LLC or C or
00:16:00
something, right? Um but yeah, we're
00:16:03
we're continuing to look at all angles,
00:16:05
but I I think some clarity would be
00:16:07
helpful
00:16:08
because this is the whole value of of
00:16:09
like sorry Chimat, but like futures
00:16:11
markets and prediction markets is you
00:16:12
can effectively create a synthetic on
00:16:14
some underlying without actually having
00:16:16
ownership or a secured interest in the
00:16:18
underlying or delivery of the commodity.
00:16:20
You could basically just say when this
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thing goes public, it's above 20 bucks a
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share, below 20 bucks a share on some
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number of days after something like
00:16:27
that. But I mean I guess one one
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question for you is is that where
00:16:30
prediction markets can take us?
00:16:31
So um the the difference within with
00:16:34
prediction markets is you can create a
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prediction market but it has to have an
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expiry date for the contract. So for
00:16:40
example we have a prediction market live
00:16:43
on the platform now about which
00:16:45
companies are going to IPO. You could do
00:16:47
something like that. There have been
00:16:49
prediction markets uh in the past, not
00:16:52
on our platform, but some other
00:16:53
platforms that make a market around the
00:16:56
IPO price, but if you just want exposure
00:16:59
to underlying equity in a private, I I
00:17:02
don't think we can do that.
00:17:03
How do you think about, you know, the
00:17:05
one criticism people have had, which is,
00:17:08
hey, we have got a young generation.
00:17:10
They're frisky. They want to take all
00:17:12
this risk. They want to bet. and your
00:17:15
responsibility as a platform that is
00:17:17
giving that access if you're the on-ramp
00:17:20
the education you give and and I
00:17:23
remember with the options and people
00:17:24
being able to short you you came up with
00:17:27
an incredibly elegant solution when you
00:17:29
try to short something you give people a
00:17:31
test you give them education in that
00:17:33
moment before they do it so so how do
00:17:36
you think broadly about young people
00:17:39
getting into wagering they're playing
00:17:41
cards you know they're they're betting
00:17:43
on fantasy football and doing sports
00:17:45
betting, but they also want to, you
00:17:47
know, have their hand in crypto and in
00:17:49
puts and calls and and and pretty
00:17:51
sophisticated stuff. So, what's your
00:17:53
responsibility as a platform then in
00:17:55
introducing them to those sophisticated
00:17:58
um ways of betting and investing?
00:18:01
I have a lot of thoughts actually when
00:18:03
uh you interviewed me for a job in uh
00:18:06
2008, which by the way was the only it
00:18:08
was one of two like final job interviews
00:18:12
that I got. Most people just rejected
00:18:14
me. I never even got a call from from uh
00:18:16
from Google or any of the others, but uh
00:18:19
it was either Weather Bill, later
00:18:21
Climate Corp, uh or Optiver, where I
00:18:24
interviewed to be an options trader. Um
00:18:27
so I got very very close.
00:18:29
We had a math team.
00:18:31
Yeah, I got very close.
00:18:32
Was he like in the interview?
00:18:34
He you probably don't even remember.
00:18:36
You remember Alex Machulka? Yeah, I
00:18:39
think he was uh he
00:18:42
um
00:18:43
I forget my recruiter's name, but that
00:18:45
guy was great. Anyway, um and then I
00:18:48
became an entrepreneur. So uh it might
00:18:51
not surprise you to
00:18:54
know that me personally uh I'm I'm sort
00:18:57
of like adverse to control on the level
00:19:00
of risk that I would take because my
00:19:02
entire career path was sort of like
00:19:05
maximally levered bet on one company
00:19:07
which is the one that I started.
00:19:09
Um so I would be reluctant to discourage
00:19:12
people from being entrepreneurs to doing
00:19:14
what they want to do with their money or
00:19:15
time. Of course, I'm I'm in favor of
00:19:18
like reasonable things like you should
00:19:21
it should be clear to you what you're
00:19:22
investing in. Um but yeah, generally
00:19:26
speaking, I think if it's available to
00:19:28
wealthy people, high netw worth
00:19:30
individuals, it should be made available
00:19:32
to retail as well.
00:19:33
Let me broaden the conversation. Um it
00:19:36
used to be historically we would have
00:19:37
banks, we would have brokerages, we'd
00:19:39
have payment processors, we'd have
00:19:41
merchant acquirers. They were all
00:19:43
disagregated. They could all be public.
00:19:45
they could all build thriving companies.
00:19:47
Now with stable coins and everything
00:19:50
else, there's this creeping convergence.
00:19:53
You're issuing a credit card. Coinbase
00:19:55
has a credit card. SoFi has a federal
00:19:57
banking license. Stripe just launched a
00:20:00
new L1 called Tempo.
00:20:02
Everybody's competing with everybody.
00:20:04
Tell us the scope of where you think
00:20:06
Robin Hood goes in the next four or five
00:20:08
years and what the financial landscape
00:20:13
and infrastructure looks like. The
00:20:15
Visas, the Mastercards, the JP Morgans,
00:20:17
what roles do these companies play as
00:20:20
you guys just become more and more
00:20:22
ambitious and girthy and big and you
00:20:24
know market cap and all that stuff.
00:20:26
Yeah, I think the industry goes through
00:20:28
periods of consolidation and then
00:20:31
divergence. I think Robin Hood has a
00:20:34
unique advantage which is that our
00:20:38
customers put an increasing amount of
00:20:40
their dollars into Robin Hood. So what
00:20:42
we're thinking about and and it became
00:20:44
pretty clear to us as soon as we rolled
00:20:46
out our second product. We kind of saw
00:20:48
what happened. Customers spent more time
00:20:50
on Robin Hood. The two products help
00:20:53
each other. So for example with
00:20:55
retirement we noticed you know the big
00:20:58
question was well if we launch
00:20:59
retirement is it going to cannibalize
00:21:01
the core brokerage business but what we
00:21:03
saw was the opposite. If someone opens
00:21:05
up a retirement account they they tend
00:21:07
to actually increase the amount they put
00:21:10
in their individual account and we saw
00:21:12
that again with the credit card. If
00:21:14
they're a credit card primary user top
00:21:16
of wallet they actually put more money
00:21:19
into into Robin Hood. So then that gets
00:21:22
us to a future where we ask ourselves,
00:21:24
can we be your comprehensive financial
00:21:26
platform? Can you put your direct
00:21:28
deposit into Robin Hood? Can you put all
00:21:31
of your money into Robin Hood? Can you
00:21:33
get to gold subscriber premium status as
00:21:36
soon as possible? And then can we get
00:21:38
all of your family members onto Robin
00:21:40
Hood as well and your kids? So yeah, I
00:21:44
don't think anyone's really thinking
00:21:46
about it from that angle, but I think
00:21:48
that there's going to be over 130
00:21:51
trillion that changes hands from silent
00:21:54
generation and baby boomers to younger
00:21:58
people. And and I think Robin Hood's
00:22:00
actually very well positioned to be one
00:22:02
of the, if not the number one primary
00:22:06
institution that benefits from that
00:22:08
transfer. We've got over a quarter
00:22:10
trillion assets on the platform already,
00:22:12
which seems like a a big number, but
00:22:14
it's actually just a drop in the bucket
00:22:16
compared to what's going to happen.
00:22:18
Where do you see the JP Morgans and the
00:22:20
V Mastercards and Visas? How do they
00:22:21
compete with an elegant product with
00:22:24
hundreds of millions of users that just,
00:22:26
you know, the product velocity that you
00:22:28
have, the risk you're willing to take?
00:22:31
Yeah. I mean, I think that uh if if you
00:22:33
think about an incumbent, they have
00:22:35
certain benefits. They're like very
00:22:37
muscular from a regulatory standpoint.
00:22:40
Like they know how to deal with
00:22:41
regulators. They've got global scale.
00:22:43
They've got, you know, tens, hundreds of
00:22:45
millions of customers, lots of assets.
00:22:48
But the disadvantage is that they're
00:22:51
sometimes slow to adopt new
00:22:53
technologies. They don't have the best
00:22:54
engineering teams. They can't move very
00:22:56
fast. Um, and they they can't hire the
00:23:01
best talent. And and so I think that we
00:23:04
don't have those downsides. We have
00:23:06
great talent. We move really quickly. We
00:23:08
use the best technology. We haven't been
00:23:10
super acquisitive historically, even
00:23:13
though we're doing more. And that
00:23:14
prevents us from being bogged down by
00:23:16
these like massive integration things
00:23:19
that take multiple years. Um, and so
00:23:22
it's a question of can we get the
00:23:24
benefits of scale while also maintaining
00:23:27
the nimleness of a technology startup.
00:23:29
Do you want to give the audience before
00:23:31
we run out of time, maybe last question,
00:23:34
but tell them about the LLM you guys are
00:23:36
building? This is a different project
00:23:37
for you.
00:23:38
Oh yeah.
00:23:38
Um and the goal of that and why you
00:23:40
decided to fund that sort of outside the
00:23:42
scope of Robin Hood.
00:23:44
Yeah. So uh he's talking about Harmonic,
00:23:47
which is a company that I started two
00:23:49
years ago and I'm chairman of and uh
00:23:52
completely separate from Robin Hood. and
00:23:55
and basically the goal there is to build
00:23:58
what we call mathematical super intell
00:24:00
intelligence. So this is um mathematical
00:24:03
reasoning that is uh exceeding the
00:24:08
capability of any individual human
00:24:10
researcher. And we we had a pretty cool
00:24:12
result a couple weeks ago where we
00:24:14
announced gold medal level performance
00:24:17
at the international math olympiad which
00:24:19
is the biggest uh mathematics
00:24:21
competition in the world. And and I
00:24:24
think to my knowledge we were the only
00:24:25
formal model.
00:24:26
You're the only formal one that got IMO
00:24:28
gold. Yeah.
00:24:28
Yeah. So open eye and Gemini. Open eye
00:24:30
Gemini
00:24:32
uh did it with informal
00:24:34
uh Gemini's in formal model got a silver
00:24:37
last year.
00:24:38
Explain why it's going to be so critical
00:24:40
to have a a mathematical super
00:24:42
intelligence model.
00:24:43
Yeah. So two reasons. Um one that has to
00:24:46
do with how these models are trained and
00:24:48
the other which is more of a consumer
00:24:50
painoint. The thing that we've figured
00:24:52
out with formal is how to verify that a
00:24:55
statement is true very precisely. And
00:24:58
when you're doing reinforcement learning
00:25:01
of these models, having a strong reward
00:25:02
signal is very helpful because you can
00:25:05
just discard all the data that's not
00:25:07
helpful and train on the high quality
00:25:10
like correct data. And when you're a
00:25:12
user of these AI models, sometimes they
00:25:14
hallucinate. Uh and and this is actually
00:25:17
not just a consumer problem, but also an
00:25:19
enterprise problem because basically if
00:25:22
you're a software engineer using a
00:25:24
coding model, your job has has become
00:25:27
over the past couple of years, it it's
00:25:29
turned from writing a whole bunch of
00:25:31
high-quality code to reviewing LLM
00:25:34
generated code and making sure that
00:25:36
that's correct. So in a world where
00:25:38
you've got, you know, LLMs producing
00:25:41
thousands and thousands of pages of
00:25:43
code, human verification just doesn't
00:25:46
scale, particularly for backend. So we
00:25:48
want to solve that problem.
00:25:49
Okay, give it up for David Sax's second
00:25:53
favorite.
00:25:56
Good to see you guys.
00:25:58
Thank you. Thanks, brother.
00:26:01
I'll see you in Vegas.
