Ryan Knudson

Regulators and lawmakers are now involved.

As he gets in front of Congress and says, look...

Actually, the majority of our customers are buying and holding stocks for the long term.

You know, there may be what you and I might call like playing it safe.

You know, I'm going to buy a blue chip stock, hold on to it for a really long time and collect my gains that way.

And he makes a point to tell lawmakers that only about 2% of Robinhood's customers are day traders.

Yeah, because I think in this moment, a lot of people are taken aback by what is in many ways like the first real instance of retail traders really flexing their muscles and, again, making huge waves on Wall Street.

And I think a lot of regulators, lawmakers—

professional investors are trying to make sense of this and are maybe a little skeptical of these aggressive investors.

And I think Vlad's instinct is to say that Robinhood is not necessarily synonymous with this group of investors.

At one point, Robinhood's market cap is about equal to the cash in its bank account, which is kind of like... It's like saying the company is like worthless.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah, I would say it's kind of like a failing grade from Wall Street, like giving your company an F, so to speak.

So it's a really challenging time for Vlad and for Robin Hood.

And as he told this to me, he basically decides to take a little bit of time with his family, go on a trip and try and get some perspective.

So he goes on a family trip to Maui and...

He gets this call, hey, we're hearing that Sam Bankman Freed, the now infamous crypto founder.

Right, this is pre-jail.

He's looking to buy a piece of Robinhood.