Robinhood CEO Calls for Tokenized Stocks to Prevent Another “GameStop Freeze”

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is calling for increased regulatory clarity and a renewed push for tokenized stocks as a means to prevent another “GameStop freeze.”

Tenev posted a lengthy statement on Twitter on Jan. 28 discussing the root causes of the event on its anniversary. “Five years ago today,” he wrote, “Robinhood and other brokers were forced to halt buying of several meme stocks, most memorably GameStop, in one of the strangest and most visible equity market failures in recent history.”

As Coinspeaker reported in 2021, GameStop shares reached their record closing price of $347.51 on January 27, 2021. However, this upturn did not last long as major hedge funds squared out their positions, causing retail interest to plummet as shares dropped from a daily high of $483 to eventually fall to under $100. This capped off one of the most turbulent events in recent stock market history.

The Reddit Rally, the Robinhood Freeze, and a Roadmap Forward

In 2021, GameStop was largely seen as a failing “mom and pop” retail leftover from the pre-digital era. Its primary business in years prior was retail video game sales and reselling used titles. By the beginning of the 2020s, however, business had declined due to the onset of live-service games, direct downloads, and game streaming.

While the firm struggled to shift its business strategy, savvy traders on the Reddit social media site saw an opportunity to profit by squeezing hedge funds that had shorted GameStop shares. This triggered massive, coordinated buys against hedge fund shorts, causing billions of dollars in losses for those hedge funds.

Much of this activity occurred on trading apps such as Robinhood, which allowed those involved to coordinate their efforts and time the market. As a result, Robinhood and other brokers placed a one-day trading pause on GameStop and other meme stocks.

According to Tenev, the underlying cause for this pause was “a set of complex clearinghouse risk-management rules designed to mitigate the risk of the then two-day-long settlement period for US stock trades.” He described the infrastructure supporting the market as slow, outdated, and unsuitable for handling “unprecedented trading volume and volatility in a small number of stocks.”

Robinhood subsequently raised $3 billion to stay afloat and cover its reserves while many traders vilified it and other brokers for halting what they viewed as fair trading.

Tokenization Is Key to Market Stability

Tenev says his firm and others advocated for real-time settlements, with a follow-on change from two-day to single-day settlements, calling the change “arguably the most consequential accomplishment of the otherwise horrific Gensler era at the SEC.”

Going forward, he says the solution to preventing another freeze like the one that occurred with GameStop trading five years ago is two-fold. Firstly, he advocates for a full-throated push into tokenization. The main benefits of tokenization are real-time settlement and the availability of traditional stocks in a fluid trading environment.

Secondly, Tenev says that regulatory clarity is needed to ensure the progress made since the GameStop freeze of 2021 is kept. “Without regulatory clarity,” he wrote, “such efforts are moot.”

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