Propose an edit: Vlad Tenev

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Title Category One sentence summary Infobox, one "key: value" per line Article body, markdown, use [[wiki links]] and end with a ## References section

Vladimir "Vlad" Tenev, born February 13, 1987 in Varna, Bulgaria to two World Bank employee parents, is the cofounder and CEO of Robinhood Markets. He grew up in Washington, D.C. before meeting cofounder Baiju Bhatt as a Stanford undergraduate, and the two launched Robinhood in 2013 around zero commission stock trading. He runs a regulated brokerage, not a trench product, yet [[Crypto Twitter]] treats him as a main character because his listing and product decisions move retail liquidity at a scale few figures can match.

## Crypto at Robinhood

Tenev became a household name in January 2021 when Robinhood restricted buying in GameStop and other meme stocks during the retail squeeze, a decision the company blamed on clearing house collateral requirements and that brought congressional hearings and lasting resentment from retail traders, including [[Keith Gill]] followers who migrated into crypto. The crypto arm soon carried the firm: in the second quarter of 2021, 62 percent of Robinhood's crypto revenue came from [[Dogecoin]], per a crypto.news profile. He also cofounded Harmonic, an AI math startup that raised a 100 million dollar Series B in July 2025.

## Robinhood Chain and tokenized stocks

On the April 29, 2026 earnings call Tenev declared a "tokenization supercycle" underway, per Fortune. On July 1, 2026 he unveiled [[Robinhood Chain]] at a London livestream billed as The World is Flat: an Ethereum layer 2 on Arbitrum's Orbit stack with roughly 100 millisecond blocks, ether for gas, and tokenized versions of more than 190 US stocks offering one to one economic exposure around the clock, initially for EU and EEA users only, per Forbes. By late July CoinDesk reported real world assets on the chain had jumped fivefold, with tokens like GameStop, Nvidia, and SpaceX each clearing hundreds of thousands of dollars in daily volume. On August 18, 2026 he publicly urged US regulators to clear a path for tokenized equities at home.

## Cash Cat and the trenches

On April 14, 2021, the How I Built This podcast's X account posted that "the original name for @RobinhoodApp was, and we can't stress this enough, Cash Cat." Tenev quote tweeted that post the same day, attaching an image but writing no caption of his own: it is the podcast's line, amplified by Tenev, not one he wrote himself. The trenches resurrected that tweet in 2026 when [[Cash Cat]], a memecoin built on the lore, became the flagship coin of Robinhood Chain. When Robinhood listed $CASHCAT in its own app on August 6, 2026, the first chain native memecoin to cross into the brokerage, Tenev's company became, in trench terms, a listing venue whose choices can reprice an entire ecosystem overnight.

## The July 2026 account hack

On July 23 to 24, 2026, Tenev's personal @vladtenev account was compromised and used to push a fake token, "VLAD" (also called "Vladhood"), falsely billed as the official Robinhood Chain mascot, not Cash Cat. Robinhood's own comms account, @RobinhoodComms, confirmed the compromise the same day: "Heads up: Our CEO Vlad Tenev's X account was compromised and posted a fake promotion for a meme coin. We're working with X to restore access and the post has been removed." Tenev confirmed he had regained access the next day, posting, "I'm back. We are awaiting details from the @X team to better understand what happened. In case it wasn't clear, Robinhood has not issued any coins or tokens. Stay safe out there." This is a separate incident from the July 8 to 9, 2026 phishing hack of the Cash Cat project's own @cashcat_token account, which pinned a link disguised as exclusive holder rewards; the two should not be conflated.

## Net worth

Forbes' real time billionaires tracker put Tenev's net worth at 5.6 billion dollars as of August 19, 2026, ranking him 746th in the world; he owns more than 6 percent of Robinhood, which went public on Nasdaq in 2021 at a 32 billion dollar valuation.

## References

- crypto.news: https://crypto.news/who-is-vlad-tenev-robinhood-ceo/
- Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/profile/vlad-tenev/
- Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2026/07/01/robinhood-launches-its-own-blockchain-new-stock-tokens-and-defi-products/
- Fortune: https://fortune.com/2026/04/29/robinhood-ceo-says-a-tokenization-supercycle-is-underway-firm-looks-past-earnings-miss/
- CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/07/25/robinhood-chain-s-real-world-assets-jump-fivefold-as-tokenized-stocks-start-trading-in-bigger-size
- CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/08/18/robinhood-ceo-urges-u-s-to-clear-path-for-tokenized-stocks-as-overseas-markets-advance
- Crypto Briefing: https://cryptobriefing.com/robinhood-tokenization-supercycle-tenev/
- X profile of @vladtenev: https://x.com/vladtenev
- X post by @vladtenev (quote tweeting @HowIBuiltThis, April 14, 2021): https://x.com/vladtenev/status/1382390320663560197
- X post by @RobinhoodComms: https://x.com/RobinhoodComms/status/2080353603160584640
- X post by @vladtenev ("I'm back"): https://x.com/vladtenev/status/2080483725209649349
- CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/07/23/robinhood-ceo-vlad-tenev-s-x-account-hacked-to-promote-token-amid-memecoin-frenzy
- CryptoRank: https://cryptorank.io/news/feed/ea768-cashcat-x-account-hack-suspected

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