On Wednesday, Robinhood Markets Inc.’s stock hit yet another record high after Securities and Exchange Commission chair Paul Atkins called the company’s stock-tokenization initiatives a “innovation.”
Earlier this week, Robinhood’s stock (HOOD) had jumped after the financial services platform introduced U.S. stock and ETF tokens for its European Union clients. Shares jumped 6.1% to a record close of $97.98 on Wednesday.
Over the previous month, Robinhood’s stock has increased 44.1%, and it has now closed at its 12th record-high close.
Atkins said he disagreed when asked on Wednesday if tokenizing a stock is really merely a means of circumventing the purpose of SEC regulations pertaining to equity trading.
“[T]okenization is an innovation, and we at the SEC should be focused on, how do we advance innovation in the marketplace?” Atkins stated in a CNBC interview. “And so I would argue here, over the last several years, the SEC has been standing athwart efforts to innovate in the marketplace, because things have been unclear.”
Robinhood is providing tokens for private businesses SpaceX and OpenAI in addition to its stock and ETF tokens.
OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, claims that it has not been involved in Robinhood’s tokenization initiative. “These ‘OpenAI tokens’ are not OpenAI equity,” the business stated in a post on X, the former Twitter platform, on Wednesday. “We are not associated with Robinhood, did not collaborate with them, and do not support this.
“Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval-we did not approve any transfer,” the business stated. “Please be careful.”
In order to increase its overall addressable market, Robinhood also extended its crypto-trading coverage this week throughout the European Union as well as the nations that are members of the European Free Trade Association, including Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.
Strong gains were also seen in shares of many other cryptocurrency companies on Wednesday, with Coinbase Global Inc.’s stock (COIN) jumping 5.7%. Early on Wednesday, the cryptocurrency trading platform revealed that it has acquired Liquifi, a token-management platform.
“Liquifi will now enable [Coinbase] to offer pre-token-launch infrastructure services, connecting with foundations and protocols prior to token launch,” Brett Knoblauch, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, wrote in a note. “[Coinbase] will then offer postlaunch services through Coinbase Prime, Base, and [Coinbase’s] exchange.”
On Wednesday, Coinbase’s stock was the second-best performing SPX in the S&P 500 index.
Wednesday saw a 7.8% increase in shares of MicroStrategy Inc. (MSTR), which is currently operated by Strategy and revealed earlier this week that it had recently acquired bitcoin. For the last 12 weeks, the business has bought bitcoin every week.
Wednesday saw a rise in cryptocurrencies as well, with XRP (XRPUSD) up 4.2%, ether (ETHUSD) up 8%, and bitcoin (BTCUSD) up 3.8% in recent trading.
