The AWS moment of finance

Robinhood's push to put Wall Street onchain.

Robinhood just asked the SEC to let them put Wall Street onchain.

This isn't a crypto side hustle.

It's a regulated U.S. broker with 26 million users formally petitioning the Securities and Exchange Commission to greenlight the tokenization of real-world assets like stocks, treasuries, and funds.

Why it matters: We're witnessing the AWS moment for financial markets. Just as cloud computing transformed enterprise technology a decade ago, tokenization stands to remake the plumbing of global finance.

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What Robinhood is asking for

1. One federal framework: → Replace the state-by-state regulatory patchwork → Enable standardized compliance across jurisdictions → Remove the #1 barrier to institutional adoption

2. Broker-dealer custody rights: → Allow regulated entities to custody and trade tokenized securities → Leverage existing compliance frameworks → Enable traditional firms to participate without parallel systems

3. Token = asset equivalence: → Establish that a tokenized stock IS the stock—not a derivative → Ensure traditional investor protections apply → Enable regulatory clarity on ownership and rights

4. 24/7 trading + instant settlement: → Markets that operate continuously like the internet → Eliminate multi-day settlement delays → Free up capital locked in settlement processes

What they're saying: "This legal equivalence is the cornerstone of mainstream adoption," noted BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in their Q1 earnings call. "Without it, we're building parallel systems rather than improving the existing one."

Market signals

In just a few years, traditional finance’s engagement with tokenization has evolved from small experiments to significant live deployments handling billions.