SEC创新豁免出台，Robinhood谈代币化股票合规与业务

Bankless Nation. I am once again joined by Johan from Robin Hood. Johan, good to see you, my man.

Good to see you. How have you been?

Good. It is a fantastic time to be in crypto. It's a fantastic time to have one foot in crypto and one foot in Tradfi, which is why I wanted to bring you back onto the show today. Also, Robin Hood and Robin Hood chain definitely seems to be the center of attention in the crypto industry. First question, Johan, as we get started, how busy are you these days? It's been busy, but I think it's good to be busy when you're in crypto.

It means that you know the market is up or that there's things going on and that people are excited to build. So, uh it's been a lot of fun to be honest.

Uh today we are recording the morning of the innovation exemption out of the SEC. This is on the backs of the failure to uh of clear of the clarity act to proceed forward and then the next day we get this innovation exemption from the SEC about the tokenized stock uh movement happening on chain. How does the innovation exemption impact you guys? What you guys are doing at Robin Hood? Is this for you? Is this for you what you guys are building or is this for somebody else?

Well, two things. One is, you know, pretty sad that the CLY act was kind of uh killed uh a few days ago. So I think uh we still need to have this federal level regulation so that things are not constantly changing and so that more and more institution can feel confident about building uh in crypto for for the long term. Um obviously super excited about the the innovation exemption. I think it really means that tokenization is also ready for the US not just something that we should keep doing um overseas.

So, uh, for us, it mean that we can bring a lot of the products that we've been building for a long time on shore. Um, and and that's really where we're going to see, um, companies like Robinood being able to have their traditional offering and also crypto and merging things together. So, really excited overall. Um there's still a lot of details to kind of understand from the exemption, but so far it seems like it's fairly um open to really create this tokenization world that we've been talking about for for so long now.

So um I'm pretty happy about the the the text so far.

So the Robin Hood tokenized stock product is not like a onetoone representation of an equity. there's some uh some lossiness because it is a debt security not a it's not actually the stock and as I understand it with the uh innovation exemption from the SEC they're trying to make a lane a pathway guidance for people to make actual tokenized securities that have a very high fidelity relationship and what that includes is permissioning and KYC for the ability to trade which is not exactly what the Robin Hood tokenized stock product is.

And so if if Robin Hood does lean into the innovation exemption, is it going you guys going to have to build a new set of products that do comply with this innovation exemption in addition to the pre-existing Robin Hood chain stock tokens? Is that is that the path forward that you guys see or what how does this proceed? Yeah, I think it's a little too early for us to to share our plan there, but I I think it's right that we want to adapt to the regulation of whatever country or products are like to and and a lot of the reason why we built our own chain and our own stock tokens and our own wallet is to actually be able to control this type of compliance requirements that we have depending on the region.

And unfortunately, you know, we don't have a regulation framework for the entire world. So every countries has different um compliance and and so we have to adapt to that. Um to your point on the the stock token so it is a representation one to one. So every time someone buy a stock token uh we mint uh the token and at the same time we buy the stock. Um so you know on that front there is no concern to to have uh when there's a lot of tokens being minted it means that we're buying a lot of the stock of whatever company um that that people are acquiring the tokens of.

Um that being said I think what the the the exemption is is talking about is a little different from the dead security token that we we created and we are going to see how we can adapt um exactly to to support that that use case. But I think for us what's important is making sure that people will be able to get the right token at the right place. Um you know we we already have this issue currently on stock tokens where you have many issuers you have the X stocks you have the on stocks and etc etc.

Um and so a lot of that require better UX and UI so that people can understand how to acquire the right token and and how and I think we are going to be able to do a lot of that for the customer. We know uh if the customer is in the US for example so we can show what token is appropriate for for them. Um and then we'll have the right market making uh pools and system in place to make sure that we can adapt to to the region.

The activity on Robin Hood chain with the tokenized stocks has attracted some of the attention of Tradfi CEOs. Some good, some bad. The AMCC CEO came out loudly spinning obscenities, calling it uh contemptable and vile. The HIMS CEO on the other hand said that, hey, what you guys are doing is pretty cool. They liked it. Um, are you guys having like conversations with CEOs about tokenized stock your guys' tokenized stock products and and what have people been been saying beyond the two CEOs that we know about on Twitter?

Um, outside of the two big uh public discussion I think you know they they were trying to attract a lot of eyes on on their company but um so far what what I've received is a lot of email of people asking to tokenize their stocks uh from a lot of these traded companies. I think a lot of people are seeing the advantage of it. Um and and again like we are buying the actual stocks uh under it's not like we we're making it of thin air.

So for a lot of people it's actually a good thing that we are making it more accessible and that we have these stocks available in 120 plus countries where a lot of people can cannot actually easily get exposure to these stocks otherwise. So I I think you know overall it's was a bit of drama on on Twitter but we haven't really seen any complaint in in person uh or we haven't received anything on the mail or anything like that.

Um I think our our goal is to make sure that people understand exactly what's going on. If if you look at the metrics on the chain uh we had a day with more than 1.2 billion in uh in stock tokens volume. uh we have many days where it's over 500 million. Um 70% of the trading happen on weekends or outside of the exchange hours. That is really what are the the signal showing that tokenization is bringing something on the table which is 24/7 trading instance element global access.

Um, and I think that's what people need to focus on and and a bit less about the um the the technicality between oh we should use this version or this version. As long as it's packed one to one, I think that's what matters. The thing that makes me laugh the most to be honest is um some companies that are talking about this are also behind some of the stable coins that are actually the same concept, right? You have a one stable coin.

It's not backed by $1 bill. backed by treasuries and equivalents. That's exactly what we're doing here where um we have one token that is backed by the stock and I think that's what matters. Vlad tweeted out that the stock tokens are going to get an upgrade with uh the ability to have voting rights and inind redemption and and I think this was in feedback to some of the concerns of the AMC CEO. Would you say that this uh upgrade to the stock tokens, the ability to vote in shareholder governance or or do inkind redemption, is this is this more about just kind of appeasing the concerns of some trady CEOs or