It was a perfect formula for the meme stock frenzy at the beginning of the year: investors, stuck at home with extra stimulus cash, free trading platforms that catered to retail investors, and a surge in chatter on social media about what to buy. The founder of the wallstreetbets subreddit that helped birth the movement says the next move is to the blockchain.
“The merging of crypto with Wall Street is going to be the next big wave,” Jaime Rogozinski told Yahoo Finance Live during “Reshaping the Market,” a special program examining the rise of the retail investor in 2021. Rogozinski no longer has a relationship with the subreddit he founded, but remains active on other boards.
“I think the next wave will be when we start seeing stocks being traded on the blockchain. If we’re talking about reducing the barriers of entry into the market, crypto is already getting into tokenized stocks, being able to purchase, and then really the floodgates completely open,” he said.
The idea Rogozinski is describing would upend the existing system of trading stocks. Like much associated with crypto, it hasn’t yet come to fruition. In theory, it would effectively allow individuals to buy and sell stocks directly from one another, a goal Blockchain.com is reportedly working to introduce next year.
Rogozinski himself is an adviser on a WSB-branded blockchain token that aims to activate another use-case: decentralized portfolio construction. The decentralized app, or “dapp,” has members that vote on what to include in an exchange-traded portfolio.
Julie Hyman is the co-anchor of Yahoo Finance Live, weekdays 9am-11am ET. Follow her on Twitter @juleshyman, and read her other stories.
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