Vlad Tenev, chief executive officer of Robinhood Markets Inc., during the Token2049 conference in Singapore, on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025.
A tokenized asset is a digital representation of a real-world asset, like stocks, bonds, or commodities, that can be recorded and traded on a blockchain or distributed ledger.
"I think most major markets will have some framework in the next five years," he said, though he added that reaching 100% could take more than a decade.
"Tokenization is like a freight train. It can't be stopped, and eventually it's going to eat the entire financial system," Tenev told a panel at a crypto conference in Singapore on Wednesday.
The tokenization of real-world assets, from stocks to real estate, will spread to financial markets around the world, according to Robinhood Markets Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev.
In June, Robinhood began offering more than 200 tokenized U.S. stocks to customers in the European Union, giving them a new way to gain exposure to the underlying assets. The move sent its stock surging to a then-record high.
"I think it will become the default way to get exposure to U.S. stocks outside the U.S.," Tenev said.
He expects the practice to gain traction once there is greater licensing and regulatory clarity in more jurisdictions.
"I think that will come, starting in Europe, but then expanding to the rest of the world," he said.
On the other hand, Tenev expects the U.S. to be among the last economies to actually fully tokenize, due to what he calls the greater sticking power of the financial infrastructure.
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