Vlad Tenev

Tenev argues cost and efficiency alone will drive the industry to adopt tokenization even absent consumer benefits.

“you could see just from cost and efficiency sake, the, the industry is going to adopt tokenization”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:27:28

Tenev expects 24/7 trading of individual private companies to arrive, likely outside the U.S. first.

“Obviously, individual private companies trading 24-7 is the North Star. I think we'll get there, probably outside the U.S. first”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:24:55

Tenev characterizes tokenization as an unstoppable force that will absorb the whole financial system.

“A freight train that can't be stopped and will eat the whole financial system”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 0:07

Tenev cites robo-advisors as precedent, saying human financial advisors grew faster because clients value trusted delegation.

“the human advisor market is growing much faster than the robo-advisor market”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 2:03:16

Tenev predicts there will be more lawyers and software engineers in ten years than today.

“My hot take is there will be more lawyers in 10 years than today and more software engineers”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 2:01:59

Tenev suggests Trump Accounts could become the largest element of long-term U.S. saving and investing within about a decade.

“You don't have to squint too hard to see it being the biggest element of long-term saving and investing in this country within possibly even a decade”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 58:37

Tenev states that broad individual ownership of quality financial assets is the theme behind Robinhood's products, including Trump Accounts.

“We believe that ownership of high-quality financial assets in individuals' hands is extremely important”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 57:38

Tenev argues AI research is among the easiest work to automate because models are relatively sandboxed with simple interfaces, unlike consumer products.

“I think AI research is probably one of the easiest things to automate because the models are sandboxed”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:53:27

Tenev says he would not want current humanoid robots in his home and questions their aggressive, Terminator-like design.

“I still can't understand why all these things look like the Terminator, you know?”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:36:54

Tenev expects formal verification to extend to LLM and AI model behavior within about five years.

“I would bet also that it'll find its way into the LLM and AI model behavior in some form or fashion within the next five years”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 46:41

Tenev reports that general-purpose models used in Robinhood's agentic trading often decline to trade because they are not trained for it.

“the fact that we don't have control over the model means that a lot of times these models don't want to trade”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 31:49

Tenev argues AI is unpopular partly because ordinary investors cannot own stakes in private AI labs and see only insiders getting rich.

“to them, it's just wealthy insiders getting richer and richer as a result of this technology and not, you know, their families or their communities”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 24:16

Tenev argues that AI carries far greater potential harm than financial services, which is heavily regulated, and finds pushback against AI regulation odd.

“comparing my industry, financial services, and how regulated it is with AI, and AI has basically unbounded risk and unlimited damage”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 14:34

Tenev argues that whether ordinary legal liability suffices for AI depends on the scale of potential catastrophe.

“This question rests on how big the blast radius of any potential catastrophe could be”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292 (Sep 19, 2026) · Listen from 5:39