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The Future of Crypto, Bitcoin, & Prediction Markets · Earn Your Leisure

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  Speaker 2: Where do you see crypto going? Because obviously that's a
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  Speaker 2: major staple in you in what you guys have built
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  Speaker 2: with Robin Hood in twenty twenty five, let's say twenty
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  Speaker 2: thirty five, right, Yeah, where do you see crypto going?
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  Speaker 2: And Bitcoin specifically?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the IU guest needle mover for crypto
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  Speaker 3: is that it's going to help take the great things
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  Speaker 3: we've built in the US and make them increasingly global
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  Speaker 3: and available to investors all around the world. Some of
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  Speaker 3: which haven't had access to these tools because I think
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  Speaker 3: we kind of take it for granted here that we
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  Speaker 3: have the US dollar, we have access to US stocks,
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  Speaker 3: we have really high quality assets. When Robinhood gets our
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  Speaker 3: private initiatives, we'll be able to distribute access to private companies,
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  Speaker 3: so we have really good investments and ways to allocate
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  Speaker 3: your capital. If you're in Venezuela, you don't have access
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  Speaker 3: to those things. And that's actually why stable coins have
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  Speaker 3: been so popular, because a lot of these people are
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  Speaker 3: in countries that have unstable governments, unstable central banks. If
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  Speaker 3: they do have central banks at all, they don't have
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  Speaker 3: functional banking systems. Currencies are devaluing and they're just adding
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  Speaker 3: zeros and zeros to them. Bills are worthless. So stable
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  Speaker 3: coins really became popular as a way to store your
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  Speaker 3: wealth and US dollars because you know, the crypto companies
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  Speaker 3: actually went in and built local rails connecting to all
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  Speaker 3: of these markets, so they've been plugged into the crypto system.
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  Speaker 3: And I think crypto will evolve with tokenization to make
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  Speaker 3: it easy to distribute US stocks and other investments overseas
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  Speaker 3: as easily as stable coins have done it to dollars.
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  Speaker 3: So I think that's the future. Crypto will sort of
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  Speaker 3: like the technology will help stitch together all of the
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  Speaker 3: markets that make it so that everyone is on a
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  Speaker 3: level playing field outside the US as we are in here.
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  Speaker 3: That's at least the future that we're working to build.
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  Speaker 2: So you believe in oh ecosystem, not just bitcoin, not
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  Speaker 2: a Bitcoin maxie.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not a Bitcoin MAXI yeah, I mean I'm a
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  Speaker 3: bitcoin fan, and I think bitcoin has an inherent advantage.
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  Speaker 2: Price prediction.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, price predictions are tough. I would tell you, I'm
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  Speaker 3: pretty I'm pretty bull And if you told me at
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  Speaker 3: the beginning of the year that there would be like
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  Speaker 3: a national Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and all of these dats
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  Speaker 3: and we would still be sitting here basically flat for
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  Speaker 3: the year, maybe a little bit up, I'd be surprised.
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  Speaker 3: It's got a lot going for it. It's a singular asset, right,
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  Speaker 3: It'll always be the first, So I think I think
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  Speaker 3: it's got a bit of a religion around it with
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  Speaker 3: the Bitcoin maxis, and and that's hard to fight relative
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  Speaker 3: to the other coins.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think obviously, if you look at the correlation
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  Speaker 1: between the rise of bitcoin getting up to one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and twenty six thousand. You watch your stock also get
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  Speaker 1: towards all time high around the same time. People feel
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  Speaker 1: like there's a correlation there, But there's also a piece
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  Speaker 1: that has helped the stock, and that's the predictive markets. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so not only could you invest in coin, but you
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  Speaker 1: could say, hey, I see it getting to one hundred
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  Speaker 1: thousand by December thirty. First, talk about the role that
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  Speaker 1: predictive markets is played, because we talked about it like
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  Speaker 1: you were thinking about it. We were talking about the
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  Speaker 1: probably market the last time we met in Miami, and
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  Speaker 1: now predictive markets are a thing, a real thing that
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  Speaker 1: I feel like you guys have adopted right away. Some
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  Speaker 1: of the other people in the space, haven't. Ye're looking
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  Speaker 1: at you guys like, this is a leader. Do we
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  Speaker 1: need to add this? This is going to be disruptive.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And it's kind of a fun position for
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  Speaker 3: me to be in because typically when you look at
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  Speaker 3: crypto and all the other products we've added, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: stock's probably the best example. We were like years after
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  Speaker 3: the leaders, right, I mean, stocks went electronic in the eighties.
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  Speaker 3: Basically you trade got started. The idea was to trade
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  Speaker 3: stocks on the Apple Macintosh. Apple Macintosh had come out,
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  Speaker 3: and these two guys got together in Palo Alto, California,
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  Speaker 3: and we're like, what if we use the Apple macintalk
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  Speaker 3: to trade stocks? And I think that was in nineteen
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  Speaker 3: eighty two, which is pretty crazy, So we were multiple
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  Speaker 3: decades late to the game for electronic trading in stocks.
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  Speaker 3: Crypto started in two thousand and nine. We added crypto
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  Speaker 3: to the platform in twenty seventeen. Actually, yeah, twenty eighteen
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  Speaker 3: was when you could start trading it. So typically we've
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  Speaker 3: had an approach where we come in after there's like
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  Speaker 3: clarity that it's a real thing that people want, and
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  Speaker 3: then we just bring our scale, lower costs, and you know,
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  Speaker 3: better UX to the product. So prediction Markets is a
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  Speaker 3: new one for us because we were kind of out
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  Speaker 3: in front and then it's sort of like how do
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  Speaker 3: we maintain our lead and market positioning and you know,
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  Speaker 3: when we have a bunch of people coming after us.
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  Speaker 3: It has surprised me that, you know, you have the
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  Speaker 3: exchanges like Polly and Calshi, who have obviously been there
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  Speaker 3: from the beginning, but like no other brokers has gotten
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  Speaker 3: into it yet, no other broker of significant consequence, And
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  Speaker 3: I think they're coming like they're seeing what we're doing
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  Speaker 3: and they see that it's resonating with traders and just
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  Speaker 3: with mass market retail. But yeah, I think we're also
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  Speaker 3: moving and we're adding new innovations. I think the event
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  Speaker 3: that we're gonna we're gonna unveil on the sixteenth is
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  Speaker 3: is going to show some new things to people that
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  Speaker 3: they haven't seen before. And it's the fastest growing business
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  Speaker 3: that Robin Hood's had. You know, in the past year,
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  Speaker 3: we've gone from one single contract, which is the presidential election,
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  Speaker 3: to over fifteen hundred. We've gone from it's basically the
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  Speaker 3: volume is doubled quarter over quarter. Q three had I
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  Speaker 3: want to say, two point two million contracts, but then
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  Speaker 3: October had two point five million, so more than Q
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  Speaker 3: three put together. And then you had November. We announced
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  Speaker 3: some November numbers, three billion contracts traded in November, which
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  Speaker 3: is yeah, it's a thirty million revenue in a month.
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  Speaker 3: So so three hundred and sixty million run rate if
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  Speaker 3: you take the November numbers, which is a big ramp,
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  Speaker 3: and I think you know it's it's it's just been
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  Speaker 3: really resonating with the traders and sports betting sports a
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  Speaker 3: big part of it, but the big part of what
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  Speaker 3: we're doing is also diversifying the contracts. So it used
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  Speaker 3: to be just elections and elections I think to me
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  Speaker 3: is probably the most interesting. Then we added sports and
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  Speaker 3: we've added a ton of leagues.
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  Speaker 2: There is it sports betting or like, what is it exactly?
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  Speaker 3: I liked most people I took to call it wagering.
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  Speaker 2: Wagering, Okay, I like the language there.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's different in all seriousness to sports bet
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  Speaker 3: and a lot of people ask about, you know, how
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  Speaker 3: is it different from a regulatory standpoint, from a product standpoint.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's significantly different. And I haven't really done
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  Speaker 3: much sports betting, But what people love about it is
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  Speaker 3: you can actually trade these contracts during the game, so
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  Speaker 3: you know, the because it's a two sided market, the
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  Speaker 3: exchanges run the contracts while the games are happening, and
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  Speaker 3: that's when the information's coming in. I mean, for example,
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  Speaker 3: you can see how each play changes, changes the odds
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  Speaker 3: and the outcomes, and you can go in and out
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  Speaker 3: of the positions and a lot of the market participants
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  Speaker 3: that are coming in both from the market maker side
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  Speaker 3: and sort of like on the trading side, are the
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  Speaker 3: same market participants that have been trading futures and equities.
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  Speaker 3: So I think it's disruptive to sports betting, but I
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  Speaker 3: see it as a fundamentally different animal and a better product,
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  Speaker 3: which is why I think all the traditional sports betting
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  Speaker 3: sites are so nervous about it, and they're just sort
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  Speaker 3: of like, uh, yeah, they see the writing on the wall,
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  Speaker 3: and they're they're working as hard as possible to figure
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  Speaker 3: out their prediction market strategy, and some of them are
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  Speaker 3: outright pivoting to prediction markets completely.
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  Speaker 1: As soon as you said the November's numbers went up,
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  Speaker 1: I automatically thought NFL and its height constable in its height,
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  Speaker 1: but it's not just sports and NBA. NBA is and
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  Speaker 1: it is kicking off World Series is just about the end.
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  Speaker 3: Well, and we have I think we mentioned this earlier
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  Speaker 3: AI model contracts, which you know is a space I
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  Speaker 3: feel like I have some understanding of, and you have
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  Speaker 3: traders that are specializing in very specific areas, and you know,
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  Speaker 3: like four months ago, it was I think thirty five
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  Speaker 3: percent chance that Gemini would have the best model by
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  Speaker 3: the end of the year. Chad Gpt started the year ahead, right,
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  Speaker 3: and you know, if you really for folks that really
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  Speaker 3: kind of understood what was happening in the AI world,
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  Speaker 3: it seemed like conventional wisdom was wrong. Right, you have Google,
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  Speaker 3: who's on a steep trajectory, and they have all the data,
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  Speaker 3: all the compute, they're highly motivated. I think now we
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  Speaker 3: look at the Gemini release and it's like, well, it's
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  Speaker 3: so obvious they had all these tools. But back then,
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  Speaker 3: I think conventional wisdom was wrong. So I think for
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  Speaker 3: a trader, it's going to open up more possibilities, and
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  Speaker 3: you know, you can specialize in things because there's probably
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  Speaker 3: at least one topic that each person understands better than
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  Speaker 3: the average conventional wisdom. So I think it'll pull in
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  Speaker 3: more traders. But I think the most interesting thing for
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  Speaker 3: me is that it creates a new source of information.
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  Speaker 3: It's almost like the new media or new news, or
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  Speaker 3: instead of watching talking heads pontificating about what's going to happen,
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  Speaker 3: you can just look at the market and then you'll
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  Speaker 3: learn a little bit about what's likely or what's even
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: true in this world.
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