The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 107: Robinhood Just Created A New Stock Market

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Well. We were dead wrong about Vlad Tenev and Robinhood. Holy crap. They just made a bunch of announcements that have shaken the stock market and the crypto market to their core. We'll explain what they are doing, why it's kinda cool, and what it means! Enjoy! Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it! And please leave us a comment! It helps us! That's Cringe of Cody Ko: https://youtu.be/dTbEk0pVh2w Our PORTLAND VIDEO IS OUT! https://youtu.be/qX4pks0ASq8 Sign up to watch and support the show at https://benandemilshow.com ***LINK TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/CjujBt8g ***Subscribe to Emil's Substack: https://substack.com/@emilderosa ***Trade with Ben at https://tradertreehouse.com Our episode with *Kyla Scanlon*: https://youtu.be/cIHWkY35cuc Big Tech is out of ideas (ft. ED ZITRON): https://youtu.be/zBvVGHZBpMw Arguing with a millionaire (ft. Chris Camillo): https://youtu.be/1ZUWTkWV_MM We bought suits HERE: https://youtu.be/_cM1XqA9n2U __ GOODR: If you need a new pair of sunnies, get Goodr! Go to https://goodr.com/baes and use code BAES for free shipping. MOOMOO: Click this link https://j.moomoo.com/BAES to get up to 60 free stocks + 2 Mets Suite Tickets after making a deposit Terms and Conditions apply. Securities are offered through Moomoo Financial Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC __ Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa #podcast #comedypodcast #coffeezilla #robinhood #dailyshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why doesn't everybody say bro now? Yeah, I don't know. Woo, bro, bro, bro. Bro, slow it down, bruh. Speed it up, bra, bra, man, I really need to get a soundboard. You got nature sound more. Yeah, oh, man. Remember the cable guy?

To be loud. Oh, we're going to get copyright struck. I'm working on town with Ben and Lee. Tell me what's gone. Tell me what's going on So listen to her not to Ben in me Tell me what's going on Tell me what's going on

Welcome back to To movie chat, movie talk with Ben in the meal We've got a special guest on the ones and twos behind the camera His name is Dylan, everybody He's back there Dylan, you can just shout real loud So the mics pick it up I hope you guys heard that He went in the dub

We got a veritable banger of an episode They're saying it's classic style Because we are talking all about Man, I'm so excited for this actually I'm going to be geeking out Hardcore this episode He's geeking out He's geeking out

Everyone give him some space I styled my hair in the style of Vlad Tenev In honor of him I do have kind of Vlad going on I put in some leaving conditioner in my hair Because I've had it there And my guy who cuts my hair Always tells me you need to do that

Because my hair do be getting dry sometimes And it's helping with the dandruff No, no nothing helps with the dandruff actually Do you have folliculitis? Isn't that a day? I don't think so Foliculitis I don't think I do

Feliculitis is a common skin condition Where hair follicles become inflamed No, no definitely I definitely don't have that Don't get it twisted he does not have flaky lightest. Don't get it twisted. It's classic. Dandruff.

It's classic style dandruff. But anyway, Robin Hood. Celsen Blue. I know. Never wear black without the blue. Buddy, I've tried Celsen Blue. I've tried. Ptie.

Next. No, the famous one. Maybe it is head and shoulders. Yeah. Were you going to say P.T. Something? Maybe I'm thinking of Pantine ProVee. Pantene ProV.

That's not a dandruff one. I swear to God, it was just, like one time five, six years ago, I was out of shampoo and I tried my roommates at the time and it was like swab shit. And ever since then, my hair gave you dandruff. It's just ever since then, I've just had, it won't go away. It's crazy. It can't be the swab. I mean, sometimes that stuff really messes up your hair microbiome. I'm tired of the microbiomes. I'm tired of them. They got one in my gut. They got it all over my skin. Well, if you're out there, stay away from suave. You see suave, you ran out of shampoo. Don't touch it.

Run in the other direction. Just use water. I pray to God for you. Anyway, we're talking about Robin Hood, because Robin Hood launched some crazy stuff that's kind of changing everything. They're inventing a new stock market. They're inventing a new stock market.

And everybody's on it except for you. Well, everybody in Europe. You know how everybody's in Europe this summer and you're just watching from Instagram? Well, now they're all trading private companies too. You get to do nothing fun. You get to do nothing. But there's some catches.

I read some fine print last night as I was nerding out. And it's not everything as it seems. And then we're also going to be talking about Cluelly, which is also something that I came to really love the more I was reading about it. The sequel to the 1980s movie Clue. That's from the 80s? I don't know. I would guess. Wow.

Is that the junk, is Junk Candy in that? I don't know. No, I think it's Steve Marvin. Steve Martin. 1985 clue the movie who's in it who's in it john cleese i'm not seen a john i'm seeing madeline con tim curry colin camp leslie ann warren michael mckeen michael mckeen

and then uh rounding out the episode we're going to be talking about spotify's a i band everybody's favorite new band everybody's favorite new band you've been talking about them nonstop i honestly i have all their t-shirts and albums and um i'm kind of their biggest fan they they they so i did go to the concert and no one showed up That's very good. It was just a robot up there. Oh, wait, no, that wouldn't make sense because the pictures are of actual guys.

Yeah. And then, if there's time, I'm going to talk a little bit about my experience using Claude AI for therapy. Spoiler alert. It fixed them. It fixed me. And maybe, you know what? Maybe I can ask it to help me with my dandruff. That's not a bad idea.

I mean, if you're asking it about your personal life, it can't hurt to be like, I mean, that seems like the least... And by the way, also, I've got some pretty bad data. Can you help me with that? Dylan, can I blow up your spot real fast with what you just told me about the CPAP? Yes. Okay, so Dylan has what's called sleep apnea, and he was telling me before the show that he talks to chat GPT

and gave it a whole bunch of data from his CPAP machine, and it suggested a whole new set of settings that are way better. Wow. And then the bonus, we got a good bonus episode. It's going to be Hardy. You're talking about Liver King going full schizel mode. There's a new restaurant that's a new restaurant. Fun name.

And the fucking Idaho sniper kid. I was also doing some more, I was doing some more eavesdropping through texts, which is, I'm kind of addicted to it. I always loved eavesdropping, but. What are you talking about? Eavesdropping on who? Me? What? Eavesdropping on text.

What are you talking about? Like, remember that story I told where? I was sitting next to the lady on the plane, like reading a lot of text, but it's, yeah. You've got another? Yeah. Who did you eavesdrop on? Tees us? Ben and Emile Show.com for a seven-day trial.

This guy who sat next to us at dinner, and it was really, we, it's, it's a, they got to come up with some kind of word for it, but I, I, don't do it to your friends, but to strangers. It's game. It's all game. People are their most real self on there. They're just, the funniest thing, too, was the guy next, well, well, well, we. I can't sign up for a free seven-day trial. It's everything that you want and then end more.

So let's dive right in. Robin Hood. We had them on, we had Vlad Tenev on the show. Friend of the show. Friend of the show. Our first interview. He was a very good sport. No, that wasn't our first interview.

You're right. Graham Stephan was our first interview. Yeah. Yeah. Our first and still the smallest. It's okay. He's not going to. that was our weirdest one yeah that was definitely so weird he walked and he looked up at us and he was

like what am i doing here well we didn't even know who the guy yeah we didn't know who he was and he didn't know i felt duped yeah he said who do you want us to have on the show and everyone voted for graham step and we're like okay i guess this is their favorite guy in the world and we just like we're like cool what's your life like everyone's like why weren't you mean to him you guys wanted us to have him on and yeah and he famously was he didn't know who we were it was terrible it was terrible but he was also a good a nice guy a nice guy um but yeah Vlad was very nice and I mean the best sport maybe that yeah truly and like at the time the stock let me pull up the the um the stock was at God it was right around

all time lows um I'm looking I think it was around eight dollars a share yeah that sounds about right And I famously told him like, hey, man, why don't you just quit? Why don't you just stop? Yeah, you ended it. Said it would be the best thing he could do for the company. It would be the best thing he could do not only for the company but for himself and his family so that he would no longer be taking all of this hate all the time. He could just step back, retire, walk into the sunset. And boy, was I wrong.

And boy, am I? Wouldn't it be cool if he did all this to spite you? I mean that would be the most powerful I would that would make me yeah somewhat like astonished like damn I created so much wealth from spite you're like Trump's White House Correspondence dinner Barack Obama moment

yeah yeah and Vlad was just like well fuck you actually he was so nice so nice like I'm not gay but he's definitely one of those guys he's definitely one of those guys he's definitely one of those guys where I'm like there's just something about you

that's just such a cozy, like, I just want to hug you, man. Interesting. I don't know why. I don't know why. Maybe he reminds me of something or someone. You do this a lot where you caveat, like, I'm not gay, but man, when I suck the shit out of that guy. Yeah, well, because I'm not gay, but, but anyway, they did a really cool presentation for this. By the way, this is not sponsored whatsoever.

I don't own, I regrettably don't own any king shares of Robin Hood. It is also funny to call it really cool. opens with like it's like a it's him ripping through the riviera it's definitely not him you don't think oh let's play you know what you don't is Dylan can you play just there's so many cuts of like okay look here's the wheel and here's the steering wheel and here's the yeah and here's the road and here's the rum that looks like a Cadillac or something too no it's got to be some euro oh I mean for sure it's some European I think it's a jaguar yeah and the briefcase the briefcase comes back that's an old jag yeah

Yeah, that's definitely not him. I mean, I think just for liability stuff, they're not letting their CEO. Yeah, but he's worth like $5 billion. Whip it in a jag. But then he does pull up in it. Come on. Wow. Oh, I'm sure he...

For the audio listener, it's just a beautiful little Jaguar. Jaguar, like 60s model, turn in and burning around corners and stuff on the French countryside. You're not missing anything, I assure you. And it's a, but it's, it's just a little goofy. Yeah, they're in Canada, apparently. Yeah. It is very goofy. When are they going to fucking show him?

Jesus Christ. I don't think it's him. Vlad, if you did do all this driving, I apologize. I definitely, well, that's him right there. That, yep, there he is. Yeah, well, that's him right there. Maybe they just had him do the last quarter of a mile. I'll tell you what.

All right. And we can cut now. Brad Pitt does not rip that Shelby out of, uh, out of the neighborhood in, in once upon a time but you do see his face in the car no wait Shelby he's driving a carmonguea oh is he yeah whatever you're thinking of the guy who plays the

predator director predator yeah he's like an autort but a predator what's his name Roman Polansky oh pedator yeah excuse me I'm a predator predatory we've created a new genre

so yeah he's refined about his sex pestes Yeah. It was super cheesy and there's so, I mean, we'll play some of them in a moment. The suit is incredible. The suit is incredible. The pinstripes with the ascot. It's all. There are so many dry jokes between him, the head of crypto, and I forgot what her title is, like head of design or operations or something. Yeah, he's incredibly dry. I mean. But it's like funny and charming. It works for me. He does. I will say, because we had a little bit of an interaction. with him through Stockton's stuff. It is funny. We probably saw him at his lowest point.

He does seem so much... Oh, dude. Happier? I don't know what, like lighter. Because all the GameStop dorks are out of the... There are still people I was seeing... And I mean his net worth, probably 10x. Oh, his net worth, absolutely 10x.

Vlad Tenev net worth. He's now worth $4.6 billion. God, he's 38 years old, worth $4.6 billion. oh man wow he's 30 for some reason i would think he's older but that's probably because he's got five billion dollars and he's from bulgaria born in bulgaria it uh and yeah like i i have in my notes here Vlad looks so i have in my notes folks Vlad looked so good with two exclamation points he does look better he looks so but also his like general presence oh yeah um everything he seems a lot because i think that the company and i wonder how much of this shit was in their

pipeline when he came on the show. They didn't have the credit card yet. Oh, they didn't have, I mean, they just launched crypto, like, really, uh, it was like I think really early days of that. Yeah. Um, because now that I'm looking at the company,

I'm like, oh, holy fucking shit. They, there are so many things now rolled into one. They're no longer just on the app. They've got a desktop version for trading. They've got their various credit cards. They, in fact, one of the things that they announced is, um, cash back credit cards for you get instead of getting cash back in dollars you can get it in

whatever denomination of crypto bitcoin ethereum whatever yeah he he was talking about how everyone loves it 3% cash back and everything and they're so they're just it's it's i like to geek out about this stuff because i just love to see i just like it when companies are smart about execution and they're just doing it really really I do also think it's a bit of the the like environment has changed very nicely for that not changed it did seem like this was all in a downtrend right the whole like crypto nfti everything and it all kind of rocketed back in like a huge way where this new the polymarket calci all this stuff uh just wanting to commodify everything trade everything, tokenize everything, is like very good for them.

Oh yeah. And they're now one of the most coveted stocks out there. I mean, the volume, the money that's flowing into the stock is tremendous, both from like retail traders and now institutions. But so they announced a bunch of features and we'll talk about the tokenization stuff because that's a big, that's a big. That's a big. big, big part of this. So it was mainly for the EU. That's why they were doing it on the French Riviera. I think it's only for the EU. Some of this, I mean, they did announce some stuff for the Americans. So now they're suddenly live, their Robin Hood Crypto is live across 31 countries, whereas before, I believe it was only six. And they announced a couple

features. I'm going to just get them out of the way. One of them is perpetual futures, which I had never heard of. I mean, I did, but I didn't know that they were called. that. And I guess the shorthand is perps. They call them perps. So what's a perpetual future? It's just whereas normal futures has an expiration date. So like I'm buying, I'm guessing that the price of Bitcoin will be 105,000 by October. Right. Now it's you can just hang on to it. You can just hang on to it indefinitely. Think of it as a way to short or go long the underlying crypto without buying it outright. And you can use leverage. So you can bet on, basically bet on where the puck is going,

if I'm going to use like a hockey analogy or where the baseball is going. But on a long enough timeline, can you just hold on to that? Well, because if you're using leverage, you're going to have to... Especially with Bitcoin. Well, but, so if you are using leverage, you do have to put up collateral. Oh, okay. If it starts to move against you, you're going to be fucked. Right.

For those of you who don't know, they had just acquired this company called Bit Stamp, and it enables them to do all of that. They don't have that yet in the United States, but, I mean, geez, Louise, to be able to, like, I would never touch that shit. I would never, I couldn't. A lot of this stuff, I mean, we'll get into it, but because this isn't even some of the craziest stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But here, let's, that's the thing. All this is just like inventing new ways to gamble, I guess. Yeah. And this is the economy now. Let's play this around 1708 here. This is one of their features, but it also has one of the jokes that I thought was fun to highlight. Another feature. Starting now, Robinode is the only major platform in the U.S. where you can choose exactly which specific crypto holding you're selling when you're trading, allowing you greater management of your capital gains and losses. Profit is really only profit after you pay your taxes, so having this ability is really going to be useful.

For those of you with paper hands like Johan here, this is going to be especially helpful. He's just harvesting his smile after? That's what I love. It's like, there are. unapologetic in their presentation of this shit. But I actually really like that because let's say for you, Emil, you've bought multiple lots of Bitcoin. So let's say you bought one in January and then you bought one in March. And then in September, when you go to sell one of those, this now gives you the option of picking which one you sell. Right. So, well, actually a better example would be if you waited the full year

into next January you could pick less profit I could you could pick to sell that January one thus locking in the long-term tax tax rate versus selling the earlier the one that you'd bought in March it's just a great little

it's such a simple thing but it's very rare to like find that I haven't seen that anywhere else yeah they announced for United States people the credit cards and staking. You can now do the thing where you like collect yield. I don't understand how that shit works still.

I think it's because the model for like Ethereum is proof of stake. So if you hold it, if you hold your Ethereum, you're participating in the network. In that participation, you get to earn a small amount of the fees that flow through the network. It's my understanding of it. Okay. So then the big thing was tokenization that got launched in. in the EU. And they are, the first part was stock tokens. So prior to this, if you're European, first of all, congratulations, have a cigarette outside at 2 p.m. And a glass of wine.

And a glass of wine. Enjoy yourself. European customers prior to this, they, well, I mean, they still can't. You can't buy US stocks and ETFs outright. There are all sorts of, I mean, you could, but you've got to like set up everything. There's tax. shit. It's just a nightmare to be able to buy and sell, to trade freely American stocks and ETFs. So what they did is they

tokenized it. It's all on chain now, baby. And so just a quick primer. tokenization is the process of creating this is from Robin Hood's own literature on this. They've been talking about tokenization and like advocating

for it for a long time. tokenization is the process of creating a unique digital and anonymous representation of an asset. So just think of it like a, where's there's, you can buy a stock. It's just a digital sort of clone proxy for it. It's like an NFT of a stock. Yeah, kind of. And what I really liked about this whole presentation before we get a little bit more

into it is Vlad was talking about how the adoption of crypto tech has always just been like talked about and always promised is just around the corner and stuff and he was like we're tired

of hearing about that so we're kind of just someone's got to take the initiative and actually start to implement this technology and provide it with actual like use cases the technology of tech tokenization of like blockchain and crypto stuff and i struggled with that for a long time because i thought it was more of a regulatory issue that they weren't allowed to like

because that's why it's not allowed in the united states the tokenization yeah i thought the tech was like we can do this but regulatory we're just like it's both i think it's um i mean for the last few years there's all this talk about how like blockchain and blah blah blah blah blah blah and i keep trying to wrap my mind around well what is that going to look like like how am i going to be able to use that in some kind of practical way because every time i try to understand it i can't understand it oh i've been i mean we haven't even talked about the space x and the yeah um open i have it all but i'm just like i think i understand i think i understand it but i'm just like what are you talking about what i realized is it doesn't matter it would be like trying to

understand the internet before using it we don't really fully understand how the internet i mean we do it's like a network of computers and shit but for the most part we just use it and trust that it works right and i from from what i'm gathering with this in the way that they're like it's not like they're not asking me to buy things that i don't understand sure they're saying like use this use email it's a program where you can send and receive messages and i'm like great I don't need to know how it goes through the cables or whatever. But if they're like, buy this product, it's a representation of another product. I'm like, what are you talking about?

Well, what I'm saying is with this, this is a first step to even though it's, yeah, in this case, it's buying and selling of like assets. I think it's representative of a big first step toward more implementing things on the blockchain. Oh, I think that's definitely true. I mean, I heard him talking and he was like, we want to. to tokenize everything. He said carbon credits. I mean, just, yeah. Which still is like, I'm, I don't fully understand that, but. And because we've already talked about it a little bit, but the, the open AI and SpaceX thing we're talking about is that they are offering to EU residents only, EU, you can, this was the most confusing thing to me, because he was saying you can now

be a part of owning these companies that have not gone public. Like, Open AI and SpaceX. And we were, like, on the phone trying to figure it out because we're, okay, is SpaceX offering? Yeah. I think, I mean, if I, here, maybe, like, did Robin Hood buy a stake in it and now is offering you to take part in that? So, okay. So.

Because at first I thought SpaceX was saying, like, we're, but SpaceX seems to have no, yeah, even knowledge of this. Because, because one of the thing, here, let's, let's go straight to it, actually. Let's go to 36, the 3640 mark. We'll talk about exactly what this is. You can start it like right there. Now, the keys to the first ever stock token for Open AI. You missed him taking it out of the briefcase.

Oh, yeah. That doesn't matter. Also SpaceX. SpaceX is in here too. If you download the Robin Hood EU app, which we gave you ample warning, to do, you're about to figure out why we gave you that warning. All right, pause it real fast. I'd like to transfer these. So, first of all, this is a brilliant marketing tactic.

He invites everybody in the EU to download the app first. Right. And now is the incentive to get people to download it because he took out these two like metal things that has a QR code and, yeah, go ahead and play it. Well, and you'll get five euros of the... You're basically getting five bucks worth of the million dollars that they've allocated. for both OpenAI and SpaceX, which are currently privately held companies.

...to you and give you exposure to two of the most valuable private companies in the world right now. We'll give you a week to onboard. Then we're going to release all the tokens. So as long as you're a Robin Hood EU customer, you'll be able to claim what we believe are the world's first OpenAI and SpaceX private stock tokens on a decentralized blockchain. And just remember, the deadline is an of day on Monday, July 7.

I didn't understand a word you said. This is really exciting. His accent is too thick. I'm sorry. Coming from Johan, that means a lot. The last time this guy was excited was when Bitcoin hit a dollar. Okay.

Well, because here, father. In the beginning, the guy says, I have been working in crypto for a long time, and I saw, I'm venturing into Puerto Rican here. And then he said that he sold all of his Bitcoin at a dollar. Yeah. That's why he calls him paper hands. Well, anyway, so he goes on to scan the code.

And he takes, he sends a million dollars worth of each of these things to the Robin Hood network for it to be distributed to everybody, which is neither here nor there. But so you're, we were trying to figure out yesterday. Okay, so what does this mean? These private tokens, were they issued by SpaceX and Open AI? Right. Originally, when I just saw the thing, I assumed that Open AI and SpaceX had struck some kind of partnership with them and they were like, look, now we're like crowdfunding. You're a part of our early investors program, but that does not seem like it's the case at all. Or like existing investors can offload some of their shares via these tokens, not the case. Also, it's just part of the thing with these things being privately held is there's no public disclosures on what their revenues look like, what their profits and losses look like. and so on and so forth. They are illiquid,

so you can't really readily buy and sell them. So as I'm researching this... Right, part of the joke is that Robin Hood is providing exit liquidity for these companies, yeah. So I found that there is a company called Republic that... And this is, again, the genius of what Robin Hood is doing. This is not unique to Robin Hood.

There was a company called Republic that did this six days ago. They launched the same exact thing. Oh, that is funny, Because he said a weird thing where he was like, he had a weird caveat. He said, we're launching what I believe to be the first coin of its kind or whatever. I was like, why are you? And like, Cracken and some of the other crypto giants are also doing this at the same time.

It is funny how it all kind of happens at the same time. But in this article that I found from this other company called Republic, it said, quote, permission from SpaceX or other firms isn't necessary as the tokens represent securities sold by Republic itself. Meaning, replace Republic, which is the other company with Robin Hood, Robin Hood has just like a million dollars worth of these things. They're just saying, this is SpaceX, this is Open AI, and they are gifting it to people. Oh, you don't even think it's connected. I know it's not. Let's look at Robin Hood's own disclosure. Because I ended up on Wall Street bets

Because I was like I was just curious what they were saying about it Yeah And this I was like maybe this is what it is But maybe this is wrong Some guy said Robin Hood owns some shares in SpaceX Not even

They write an IOU Tie that to a token A crypto coin Where they promise they'll give you that share somehow The tokenization part lets you trade it freely You can't trade the IOU Because there are legal issues But you can trade the token

That says you get this share Of SpaceX promised by Robin Hood loosely, yeah. So looking at their own disclosures, right under where it says offer, that second paragraph, it says, for the purposes of these terms, stock tokens are financial derivative contracts between you and Robin Hood. It's not between you and SpaceX. It's not between you and OpenAI or any other private company that they might heretofore offer. It is between you and Robin Hood referencing certain stocks of private companies. Dude, this is going to be a mess. Stock tokens do not entitle you to any right to receive the underlying private stock asset. The value of stock tokens depends on the performance of the underlying private stock asset. So, in other words, if OpenAI doesn't go up in value or goes down in value, the stock token value is tied to that. But again, like I said, it's illiquid.

Yeah, but also look at the limitations. Even if it does, it's all based on their own valuation. the private stock tokens reference the value of OpenAI and SpaceX private stocks, which for the purposes of the promotion, Robin Hood is valuing based on its own internal valuation methodology. Yeah, so basically, I love that. Yeah, we're just kind of our own internal valuation methodology, you know, these are private, unlisted stocks that are not actively traded, and therefore the private stock tokens are not, as of the date of the promotion,

redeemable with Robin Hood, nor can they be sold to Robin Hood, transferred off platform or otherwise traded unless and until Robin Hood makes this functionality available. So basically for now, you're getting five free dollars that you can't do anything with. You can't even cash it in? Nope. Well, because it's still such a, and it sounds like a scam, it's not. It is a new promotion. It's just that this is the first stage in them rolling this out. I'm sure that they will make a market for people to be able to trade these things more freely. But for now, you receive this fractional share of these private companies. Yeah, but what if when it... Oh, okay. So maybe after the launch, you can do it.

Yeah, yeah. As of this date, they're not redeemable with Robin Hood, nor can you sell them, you can't transfer them, or otherwise trade them, until they make the functionality available. I also like, it says, while generally stock tokens offered by Robin Hood will be backed one for one by shares of the associated stock held by Robin Hood for the purposes of the private stock tokens as a result of the underlying private stock assets Robin Hood does not guarantee that its hedged exposure in related to the private stock tokens

will be one for one against the underlying private stock assets. Yeah, how could they? Yeah. In any event... They don't exist. Yeah, in any event, private stock tokens do not give holders any right to redeem or otherwise to receive the underlying private stock asset

nor any equivalent stock or portion of Robin Hood's hedged position. I'm curious how they're hedging because their whole thing is like we're valuing it, you know, this million dollars and we reserve the right to like hedge that position. How do you hedge against a fucking private privately held company?

Yeah, I don't know. I'm so curious. I wish it was out so we could watch it. I don't know. I'm so curious how they how they value it and how the change is going to be like how you're going to see real time fluctuation and all that it's just

this is bizarre yeah Robin Hood lastly Robin Hood reserves the right to be able to redeem the private stock tokens in the future should it be required

to redeem its underlying hedged position so in other words if their hedge against Open AI or against SpaceX fails for whatever reason and they need to like

rescind those tokens they will if that occurs Robin Hood will redeem the private stock tokens automatically at the price which Robin Hood's underlying hedged position has been redeemed and provide this value into your Robin Hood account.

So, yeah. Have you seen any statement from SpaceX or... Nope. I don't think they need to. No, I'm just, I know, I'm just curious. I'm just curious what they... Because it seems like a pretty consequential thing, but it's hard to find any...

The Wall Street Betts thing is funny. like, you know, the top comment is just a great way to trade private meme stocks at incredibly inflated market caps. It's a top comment. Yeah. With zero financial information on them or public earnings reports. It's flashy. And it's a flashy way for them to say, hey, we gave you five bucks for free by signing up

for this app, which I'm sure they already got over a million, if not way, way more. It's just a, it's just a very, very clever marketing thing. I wouldn't even call it a trick. it's just not it's not as straightforward as it seems you technically you don't own shit you own a token that represents

a potential position in these companies Hey gang we gotta take a quick break to talk to you about gooder gooder sunglasses I am a huge fan of my gooders I probably have four pairs now

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and they do receive dividends so if you are an EU customer and you buy an Apple token basically the way that I understand it and Vlad we're not going to show it because it's too long but he like writes it out on a chalkboard and it's really great you open up the Robin Hood app and he shows a side-by-side comparison of what it looks like to buy the token versus what it looks like to buy his share and this is what I was talking about about it, blockchain just suddenly being incorporated and it just works and you don't have to know why. The side by side of the token versus the share is the same fucking thing. It's just buying a token versus buying a share. And he said that the way that it works is

you tell it like, hey, I want to buy one token of Apple. And behind the scenes, a broker actually purchases an actual share of Apple. I believe it's held in escrow, that might be the wrong word, but it's, it's purchased, it's held somewhere, and then a token is minted, created out of thin air, and that digital token, it's like a, it's, it's just a, yeah, it's just a representation of the share that you just bought. But as you're describing this, I just can't help but wonder why not just buy the share? Because there's, it's, I think it's just because there's, it's just a loop. pull around all these myriad regulations.

I mean, he did talk about how they're not 24-7 yet. They're like 24-5 and they want to, I don't know. I guess, yeah, it's just some bullshit loophole to be creating 24. You're describing it. I'm like, you're describing just buying a share of a fucking stock. Basically, yeah. Except we're probably burning an incredible amount of energy to do it this time. Well, and then, and this is the part that kind of escapes me is then once you've got that

token you can treat it just like any other crypto in that you can like put it on to a fucking hard drive or something you can it's called self-custodying you take it off of the blockchain or whatever and now you can do whatever you can collateralize it you can use it as collateral for something else you can whatever the hell and then let's say you sell it the entire process just unwinds the token is destroyed the stock itself is sold and it's all, and you collect the proceeds, hopefully it was profit. And not to speak to any, whether or not it will be successful or not, it's just incredibly hard to not have NFTs, like be top of mind when you're explaining this.

Especially when they talk about tokenizing art and stuff. Right. It's like... Think of it like being able to, because art is a very illiquid thing. It's not something that you and I can readily go out and buy and sell. there's not a huge liquid market for it. The way I understand it is tokenizing things solves that problem and makes it a much more liquid market to... But NFTs were tokenized dart, basically.

Yeah, but it was like they did it in the wrong way. And he talks about that. He says in this interview, there was an interview that he did after. There's a follow-up interview. And he said, right now it's time to move on from meme coins and Bitcoin and deliver fundamental utility. And I just think it's really impressive. And it's kind of like, oh, my God, yes,

finally someone is taking the reins and being like, we're going to make this shit actually useful. And again, it's just like the very first pitch of the very first inning, I think. Sure. I don't think it's all going to be this gamifying and gamble. Let's turn it all into fucking gambling. I just think it's, I don't know, it's exciting.

I think. bit because it still is kind of exhausting for me just as someone who's like i'm like i don't think i'm stupid but i'm just like having a hard time yeah even when it gets fully explained i'm going i mean just like we just said i'm like just buy a share of the stock yeah um well they had vitalic buterin on uh let's just pull this up for a sec and scrub to a minute 40 i mean you're talking about not understanding this stuff gee i wonder why when it's guys like this who were doing the explaining. The officer at Off Chain Labs,

the initial developers and core contributors to Arbishop. Yeah, and so maybe before we get started into the actual question, we wanted to ask you maybe Vitalik, what is going of your day-to-day now? You know, Ethereum is already live, decentralized, so what are you spending your time on?

I mean, often I find that itself changes quite a bit month to month, I think. Recently a lot of this is a bit as been thinking through the Ethereum privacy roadmap and things that the foundation will do to try to make sure that Ethereum does a better job of letting people interact with it and use it privately.

So some things have already happens. There are a lot more interesting stuff to come. Also, a lot of the time it's research on various individual topics. You know, like sometimes ZK-related, sometimes security-related, you know, like sometimes application-level things. Jesus. Sometimes even going into stuff like ZK. Wait.

Okay, stop. I can't. I mean, the fact that he can't even, he, brother, you've been in the public eye for so long. You've got to know to hold the microphone. He's just holding it, he's just holding it like right here. I know, but he'll look over here. Yeah. Well, he's just like, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's good. I like it. I feel like the whole founder thing was such a, uh, terrible thing for these people because they had to be everything for the company. You know what I mean? They can't just, this guy should be hold up writing code doing whatever and just sending out some kind of PR person for Ethereum. I mean, this guy. Give me a hot. Has never, I've never seen someone look less comfortable with a microphone in their hand. Just get some hot, slick guy in a suit. Get Vlad on there. Yeah. No, Vlad. I,

I mean, look, he's not a bad face for it. I mean, I've seen, I had watched another one of his interviews since this has happened. And I think he does, like, kind of a good diagnosis of why some of these new things are needed. But I found it kind of, like, unconvincing that this is the, yeah. Well, because that's what business they're in. Sure. But, I mean, because he talks about, you know, he talks about, like, back in the day when companies would go public, it was maybe, oftentimes a lot earlier. He talks about

how if you were maybe someone just paying attention, you could have made a fortune somewhat quickly off like Microsoft or whatever, Apple or any of these things. And now these companies go public at these huge valuations. There's no room for ordinary people to get in. And when you hear him

talking about this, you're like, okay, this makes sense. But then he's like, so we're selling you fake made up coin. Representative of a share that doesn't quite exist yet. And we're valuing it ourselves, and if it does go public and we need it back, we might just take it. I don't know.

I just, I do. I'm like, sure, I can get with you. And, you know, he was kind of, that was when he was talking to us, the whole thing. And he still says that he came up with the democratizing finance. That's his whole thing. We want to make it for everybody. We'll see. I mean, it's a lofty goal.

But I just find some of these things extremely. And if you want to, like, buy open AI shares, there's, there's a, there are places that are legitimate, I think hive is one, forged global, looks like it's another. There are secondary markets. How much, how much can you get? I don't even know. Is it hard to find out? But there are secondary markets that are, it's a new thing where you can buy shares from insiders who want to divest. But again, because it's so illiquid, let's say you're an open AI insider and you want to fucking cash. out some to pay your taxes or to buy a house or put your kid through college.

There's no liquidity event, like going public that enables you so you can use one of these things. That's why I kind of thought they acquired some kind of steak. Yeah. Which honestly would have been a better idea. What was it, a fucking porterhouse? That would have been a better. A better and more legitimizing idea. Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe they're in the process of doing that. Because, yeah, Vlad is on to something because currently, if you are a person, in the United States and you want to invest in one of these companies, guess what? Unless you're an accredited investor, you can't. And what does it mean to be an accredited, an accredited investor? An accredited investor is an individual that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission deems sophisticated enough to invest in unregistered securities, such as those sold by startups or private equity firms. You need to qualify. You have to have earned at least 200K in each of the past two years.

and reasonably expect the same income this year. Your net worth has to exceed $1 million, excluding the value of your primary residence. You need, you can also qualify if you have certain, I don't know, anyway. I mean, he's definitely onto something. That's the thing. I'm not trying to dunk on the guy.

We're getting there. He's clearly very forward thinking. I mean, he's clearly changed the space, right? I mean, everyone has had to kind of follow, their lead with some of these trading features and like just the fact of having an app that you can just easily execute trades

on. Yeah. And it's you know the way they've transformed that from just being the app where you can like hit sell or whatever and you get the confetti to now having full desktop. And probably becoming the you know like the e-trade

or Schwab for a lot of like millennial Gen Z people. who are just, who just find all that, like, stuffy and confusing, and, you know, they've implemented the, I don't think they're quite, they're probably something akin to whatever robo investing things that some of these have. And you can just kind of, you don't have to just be trading. You can, you can park your money there. And I mean, dude, they're now valued at $88 billion. Schwab's valued at like $150. They're catching up. But one last thing that they're doing, they are. creating their own blockchain thing. It's going to be called like Robin Hood blockchain. So they're they are creating their right. Right now it's currently on arbitram. Yeah, yeah. Which is a layer two blockchain that exists on Ethereum. Meaning Ethereum has its own flaws and stuff as a layer one. Bitcoin Ethereum, they are layer one. They're called layer one blockchain things and they have flaws. They're slow. They're sometimes not the most secure.

So a bunch of people started creating what are called layer two things, things that function with that underlying. So like Ethereum, this arbitram one, functionally is like the same as Ethereum, but is more optimized and more secure and you name it. And yeah, they're trying to create their own thing that's probably a lot more fine-tuned for exactly what they're trying to do. Yeah, but he's also, he was talking a bit about how he's, I think he's pretty stoked about the Trump administration and it's going to make a lot of things easier. He was talking about how basically, fast track the hell out of things, I'm sure.

The Biden, the Biden administration was like, always trying to put regulations in place and do all this stuff. And he said talking with like David Sachs and all these people, they're like, he said, I think these EU things are going to be coming to America soon. What's been interesting about them is I think in the aftermath of all the GameStop shit, they really learned their lesson and we're like, okay, we got to like, if we're going to be blazing the path here, we have to work with the regulators. And that's why they've been publishing, I mean, you can go on their website. They publish papers all the time about tokenization and about regulations and things that they've suggested to the SEC and stuff. and yeah they they are pushing for these things but they at the same time are encouraging the government to like have the regulations catch up and like do it the right way and I don't know how that should look but I'm also just so curious about as they try to mainstream all this stuff

I it's like I can't wrap my mind around how prevalent this stuff actually is like you know we talked about it on stock twits the uh fanny may and freddie mack being like was it fart coin that you can you know yeah fart coin it's now an asset that can be right what's the matter what's funny i was like i must be misremembering but but using fart coin to purchase your house well no it'd be used as collateral right but hey i have 200 grand in fart coin it's my collateral in part that i'm putting up I'm just like for a squeak that past you

how often is this happening and and I am I mean I'm a little bit skeptical but maybe maybe more people are doing this that maybe more people want to have a tokenized representation of a stock than the actual

stock that I'm realizing but I feel like even in my just day to day if I'm talking to someone I'm like do you own any crypto they're like ah I think I like bought Bitcoin once or something, and that's probably sitting somewhere and I forgot the password or whatever. Well, I guess we can transition

just a wee bet. It's just worth mentioning real fast. Tom Lee, I make fun of him a lot. We make fun of them because he's always just, he's always presented the same way. Fun Stratt's Tom Lee. Funstrat's Tom Lee, he says, and he's been made the chairman of this company

called BitMine Immersion Technologies and the ticker symbol is B, N-R. And we've talked about Michael Strategy, micro-strategy on here. The company that their whole business model is just buying Bitcoin. And the stock has gone up like a thousand percent over the couple years since they've announced it. And Tom Lee is saying that they're now doing the same thing, but with Ethereum. So I just think that that's interesting and something to watch. And I'll put the link in the description so that y'all can watch it, because I think it's worth watching to listen

to what he says. What? So far down. Yeah. In fact, let's just play a little... Let's just play a quick clip of it because he's just such a... Also, Ethereum never is going to... I mean, I never say never. What?

Well, according to Tom Lee, all these banks are going to be using it because of what Ethereum offers for like... Collaboralized, you know, all sorts of fucking garbage. Tom Lee. Oh, wait. I want to hear her say Fun Stratt, start it from over the beginning.

Joining us right now is Fun Stratt's Tom Lee. He's also a CNBC contributor. And this morning, he's got some news. He looks like a Pixar character. Yeah, he does. He really does. He looks like the guy from Up mixed with the boy from Up. Yes.

And this is some big news. It's kind of complicated, but probably suffice to say that you all are doing basically what Microstrategy did with Ether. You're going to make ether, the purchases that you buy through this, you're going to set this whole thing up like this. You want to explain a little bit? Yeah, glad to. I'm still a big fan of Bitcoin because I think it is digital gold. But what we've seen in the last, really in 2025, is the financial services industry and crypto are converging. And it really started with stablecoins, which is the chat GPT of crypto, right?

because it's viral adoption by consumers, businesses, banks, and now even Visa. Underneath the stable coin industry is Ethereum. That is really like the backbone and architecture of stable coins. So it's important to create a project that essentially accumulates Ethereum to essentially protect and have some influence on the network. So that's why we're creating this treasury vehicle to buy Ethereum. the more Ethereum that's accumulated, the more secure the network is. And I think it's also sort of the architecture that future banks will have.

You know, when Goldman issues a stable coin and J.P. Morgan doing it on Ethereum, as a layer one blockchain, they're going to want to secure it by staking Ethereum. So we're trying to get in front of that by creating a treasury. All right. It's safer if you own. I also think that kind of... That makes sense? It honestly made me think about...

I think I kind of understand why they wanted to... do the tokenized stock now. Why? Because I think it's very similar to the stable coins where like you're tokenizing this thing that's pegged to a currency. I think it makes a lot more sense in other countries and stuff where you can deal in stable coins without getting around this regulatory schedule and all that.

I mean, I'm just totally spitballing, but Robin Hood can now create this kind of like divergent... market outside of a regulatory schedule that is also that also means they get to reach people globally if you're someone who's going to be locked out you say hey come on board forget about the stocks you don't even have to mess with it we're just tokenizing everything but at the same time and we'll make it it's 24 5 now but we're going to make it 24 7 so it's just global it's always going and but at the same time they are working with regulators to create new regulatory i guess it's my guess is that it's easier to create a new one

than to change the existing regulations. Yeah, sure. I think. But I think just in the time being, they're completely, they'll be able to, like, completely go around anything. It's going to be their own

ecosystem. But what I liked about what Tom Lee said, Funstrat's Tom Lee, the combination old man and the boy from Up turned into a human. He's basically a tokenized version of those two guys. Yeah, they tokenize the old guy and the little boy. And the little boy. And they now offer rare fun strat, Tom Lee's. So the way that Ethereum works is the more of it you hold,

just like shares in a company, the more influence you have over what Ethereum does as an overall network. And also the more you hold, similar to holding stock in a company that pays a dividend, end, you receive kickbacks from the network. And the fact that what he was saying about these stable coins that run and operate on Ethereum that so many of these banks are going to be using and relying on, it behooves them to also take a stake in Ethereum so that they can have influence on the Ethereum network, so they can collect their network fees, and in doing so, holding all of that just reinforces the security of the network.

so I just thought it was really smart that they're getting ahead of that like he said by starting to buy it and who knows man I'm gonna need a nap after this episode my brain is just fucking they're changing the whole day of comedy right in front of our eyes

yeah it's a comedy that's a comedy that's a comedy and so all right let's talk about speaking of crypto and all this garbage clooly you may have seen the commercial where the kid is on a date with a cute Asian girl

and he's got the thing in front of him and it's like helping him cheat on the date and then it backfires? I don't hate women. Is that what it was? Didn't she ask have you read a book and he's like

yeah? She says name one or something? She's like, name three female authors and he's like fuck, fuck, fuck, Joan Didion. Oh fuck. Joan Didian Joan of Arc and the third one. Yeah, I know.

Ryan, that's good. Turns out that commercial was not at all meant to showcase what the app actually does. And I fell victim to it. I thought that that's what it was for. They, their whole thing was it started by this guy, Roy Lee and his co-founder. And they made this video that you probably have seen or heard about where they tout its ability to help you cheat on job interviews. Yeah, didn't what? Oh, maybe we didn't play it on here.

I don't think we could because there was copyrighted music. But so then what happened was there were students at Columbia. These companies threatened Columbia University and basically said, hey, you got to stop these kids from encouraging people to cheat on their interviews for these companies. But they're not just interviews. They're like... Technical interviews. Yes, they're having you...

It's not helping you be like, you know, what's your greatest weakness? It's helping you kind of... They're giving you a data set and you have to kind of solve this problem and it's basically just telling you how to fix it. And this kid was saying these questions are bullshit anyway

and they're just like... They're not... So we created... Their software helps you do that and it runs... It's undetectable when it runs on your computer. It doesn't...

It's like... Only you know what I would do if I was these companies if you want to prove you real big shots. Why don't you make it detectable? Why don't you make a software that detects it? I thought you were going to say, why don't you come into the office

and take the test in person? That's probably a better way to do it. That's a good solve. Or show us on a chalkboard or something. I don't know. Matt Damon style. Matt Damon. So then Columbia threatened this kid

and said, you better cut it out or we're going to kick you out. And he said, fuck it. He published all of that online, all of that correspondence. He dropped out. And from that fanfare and like momentum from all of the press from doing that,

he launches this thing. He raises $15 million from Andresen Horowitz. And they've already made about a million dollars in enterprise revenue. And I didn't realize it until I actually looked into it that what they make is actually really smart and really useful for companies. The actual program to help you do the interviews?

their whole marketing thing is all about like oh we help you cheat and it makes it sound like oh fuck you guys you're going to ruin society you're making it so that people cheat on like technical interviews and and on date so it's like everyone's cheating their way through college anyway with sure to you and whatever but what their what their software actually enables people to do is like they actually have on their website a couple of use cases so like imagine meetings that you're doing online you can respond to questions uh it it can give you response to questions that are asked of you if you aren't that technically savvy say you're a salesperson or something um you can respond to these things on sales calls you can it can recall information from

earlier in these calls uh and it can always just be kind of running in the background to help you respond to stuff figure things out and that's something that people are willing to pay for and oh man it's smart but i guess their whole thing is just marketing and their whole strategy is flooding the internet with as much content as they can about this shit and I mean let's just play the clip from this show that he was on TBPN I want the one that makes me seem cool

at dinner though nothing can help you the most logical thing I say on here but the biggest societal shift in maybe human history happened about five years ago when TikTok surpassed YouTube in terms of virality and usage all of a sudden the number of content creators

stayed the same and the relative number of of content being created stay the same, whereas the quantity of content being consumed about 100x. As a result, there is this gigantic gap where there is not enough viral content for people to consume, which is why you see the same subway surfers overlaid on a Reddit store. You see that a hundred times because there's literally not enough good content out there. For the next maybe six months to a year, anything you post that has the potential to go viral will go viral, which is why you see our marketing team is all influencers with viral sense. We know we independently all have 20 ideas a day that we know will go viral. And this extrapolated out over a year will

literally generate a billion views a month. And if you're someone who thinks a billion views a month is not going to convert to some money like, bro, you're retarded, bro go back to school, bro. Wander. It's a vacation home. He's right. He's making a good point. A billion views a month is going to translate to some kind of sales, which is what their strategy is. Probably. And also, bro, if you don't get that, bro, your retarded bro, go back to school, bro. Right. These are the next American pioneers in business.

Do you think we should put on a polymarket bet that within 30 years a presidential candidate for the United States of America president is going to say retarded in one of the debates? I'd rather bet on polymarket whether or not we're going to have presidential candidates in 30 years. Can I make that bet? because I think I can cash in. I can just see that, man. The element, it's such a minor part of it,

but the element of like, it's so funny, the virality thing he's talking about, I feel like it's changed so much where, I don't know, a billion views is so different than, when we were talking about going viral, whatever it was,

10 years ago, 15 years ago, such a different thing than like, I don't know, if you got a ton of views on TikTok, that's not necessarily, necessarily in the zeitgeist. But like, if you went viral 10 or 15 years ago, it's like everything is covering it. Oh, yeah.

Well, it was a lot smaller back then. Yeah, but it's like, it's the rapidity with which things go viral that makes, and like what is... Charlie bit my finger. Everybody. Everybody saw it. It was everywhere. So I'm just like, yeah, I don't know. Are you going, I don't know.

Well, that's why he's talking about... Because things go viral on TikTok. 15 minutes. And I probably never see them. Yeah. That's, I think, why he's emphasizing having everybody on their team as influencers who know this shit. Sure. But before we close out, we got to give a quick shout out to Mumu.

Huge shout out to Mumu, the longest sponsor of the show and the official trading platform of the New York Mets. So if you're in New York in the tri-state area or even just visiting the city and going to a Mets game, you can get free tickets to Monday home games at City Field. if you're a Moomoo customer. So check out the link in our bio or scan the QR code on the screen. It should pop up right there to join Moomu

and earn up to 60 free stocks and two Mets sweet tickets to a game of your choice with a qualified deposit. Plus you can earn 8.18% APY on your uninvested cash for three months. So thank you to Moomu and the best team in baseball. We went and it was real fun.

We saw some real homers. They were hitting dingers. Go Mets. Also go Dodgers. Go Mets also. The Dodgers are always good, man. We got Shlomo-O-O-Tomo. Hats off to Shlomo O-Tomo.

Shobo. All right, folks, let us know what you think in the comments. Robin Hood got a big token. Did the Robin Hood get a token? Did the Robin get him make a token? I don't know. Let us know what you're going to tokenize. I'm going to tokenize.

I'm going to tokenize your ass. Hey, Vlad, tokenize this. tokenize this. Tokenize my ass, bitch. Friend of the show. But seriously. Tokenize the toilet, man. Oh, you know I'd go crazy over that.

Oh, man, I got to move and now I've got to get a new toilet. Now you've got to tokenize a new toilet. I just taconize that thing. Oh, man. No, because truly, my bidet is an oval shape. So I need an oval-shaped toilet. And I just realized that this new apartment and I'm applying to, it's got a round one. So your boy has to go buy a new toilet from Home Depot.

and pay a damn plumber to come over and put in the new toilet. But then it's a brand new toilet. And brother, it don't get any better than that. You do love knowing it's just you. Anyway, we'll see you in the bonus. Benamielshard.com. Bye.