Tenev says Robinhood won underwriter approval as crypto markets front-run mega IPOs
Robinhood Securities has been approved to act as an IPO underwriter, moving from a distribution role into Wall Street’s main underwriting group. Vlad Tenev said the approval is a natural next step after launching IPO Access in 2021, reflecting growing interest in retail allocations for public offerings. The move comes as SpaceX reportedly weighs offering up to 30% of a large upcoming deal to retail investors, with demand already about four times the intended size. At the same time, crypto firms are building parallel access channels for private and pre-IPO markets through tokenized equities, secondary trading, and onchain pre-IPO perpetual futures. These products are increasingly used for price discovery, with examples showing futures tracking eventual listing prices closely. Industry participants say such signals are unlikely to replace traditional book-building, but they may become a useful extra indicator of demand for underwriters and retail platforms.
