Two of the most attention-grabbing companies in the world right now are OpenAI and SpaceX.
I think if you casually mention these companies to most people, they’d have at least heard of them.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. And SpaceX, Elon’s space company.
As exciting and well known as these two companies are, for most people, you cannot invest in them. They are private in the sense they aren’t listed on any public exchange anywhere in the world.
There are some ways to invest in them, but you need to be a) pretty wealthy to start with, and b) a “sophisticated” investor able to access certain platforms to even get a look in.
Most people are neither of these.
But what if I told you that all changed on Monday?
That you can now invest in OpenAI and SpaceX. Would you want to buy those companies? Would you want exposure to the immense upside both might contain?
Well, read on and I’ll explain how now you can (with a minor caveat)…
Decentralised Wall Street… almost
On Monday the investment platform Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD) announced a massive change in their product offering.
And this isn’t just some new bells to go on their existing customer accounts. It’s the first major structural crack in a decades-old system of financial control. The kind that tells you when, where, and how you’re allowed to invest.
It’s the first major step by a highly regulated institution towards a decentralised, crypto-based capital market.
The big announcement was the debut of “stock tokens”. And that everyone in Europe that joins the Robinhood platform will be able to claim stock tokens for both OpenAI and SpaceX.
But it won’t be just limited to those two companies. Robinhood’s stock tokens, will cover all kinds of different stocks, trade 24/7 from Monday at 02:00 CET/CEST until Saturday at 02:00 CET/CEST and exist on an Ethereum based blockchain.
Now, I did say there’s a little caveat to all this.
As of now, every Robinhood user in Europe can buy stock tokens. Far as I can see, that’s not including the UK (but feel free to correct me if your Robinhood app allows you to).
Second thing:these are not shares. As Robinhood puts it, “When buying stock tokens, you are not buying the actual stocks—you are buying tokenized contracts that follow their price, recorded on a blockchain.
Let me spell that out for you: Robinhood has just put OpenAI and SpaceX equity (kind of) onto a public blockchain and made them available 24/7 to anyone with an app.
Think about that for a second.
These aren’t imaginary projects. This isn’t vapourware. These are two of the most important, most-watched private companies in the world.
And now they’re tokenised, on-chain, and open for business to the entire European public. Or at least investors can get synthetic exposure to their stock price directly via Robinhood.
These stock tokens are issued by Swiss-based Marex. They’re 1:1 backed, redeemable, and track the underlying asset’s price — including price movements when traditional markets are closed. That’s right: you can trade OpenAI or SpaceX tokens even on weekends.
Robinhood isn’t listing these just for giggles. This is part of a clear, deliberate push to break the stranglehold of traditional markets and investing.
It breaks the antiquated ideas of time-zoned stock exchanges that most people simply aren’t engaged with, and it ushers in what I’ve been calling for years: a rebuilding of capital markets built on crypto.
This is how it begins. It’s a significant step, and it’s the first towards a completely global, 24/7 borderless, accessible investment market where all equites are tokenised. And yes, I mean actual voting rights stock in every company in the world.
Robinhood stock jumps — and expect Coinbase to follow
This news was great for Robinhood shareholders. The stock jumped over 12% on the day of the announcement and another 3% in post-market trading.
The market loved this! And remember this is just for Europe. What happens when they do it for the entire world?
And if Robinhood is moving on this, then expect Coinbase (COIN:NASDAQ) won’t be far behind. They already support tokenised treasuries, USDC, and real-world asset products through Base. They’ve also recently applied to the SEC for tokenised equity trading on their platform. Tokenised equity is a logical next step for them too. And when they do, they’ll probably do it bigger, louder, and with the weight of crypto-native capital behind it.
Kiss TradFi goodbye
Expect more of this. A lot more.
Robinhood’s model will work. It will attract users. And most importantly, it will create revenue from a product class with no competition (for now).
Every fintech stock trading app in Europe, in the world is now on notice. eToro better lift their game, the high street brokers, HL, ii, Barclays… well, good luck to them.
Coinbase is almost guaranteed to follow, and then we might start seeing native crypto exchanges like Binance, Kraken and others finally get to the public markets and open up their gigantic user bases to tokenised stocks too.
This will also be open in the US and UK markets too. Likely the UK next thanks to similar regulatory structures as Europe. And then the US once the frameworks currently in the works are finalised.
We’ll see tokenised equity indexes. Thematic baskets. Tokenised IPO access. AI-powered smart portfolios that allocate between tokenised stocks, crypto, and treasuries, in real-time, across global markets, without asking anyone’s permission.
And one day, not too far from now, you’ll laugh at the idea that you used to have to wait for the market to open in the morning and get trades in before it closed in the afternoon. That on the weekend you couldn’t trade at all, and the fact there were “overseas markets.”
The way in which we invest and how companies access capital is changing, fast, and for the better.
Until next time,
Sam Volkering
Contributing Editor, Investor’s Daily
