Photo: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Robinhood meme-stocks itself

Good morning! This Thursday, Robinhood goes public, China has more demands, and Twitter dips its toe in ecommerce.
(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Source Code every day.)
Robinhood set out to beat Wall Street at its own game. And it did so, but at its customers' expense. It's now set to profit off of retail investors once more through its initial public offering today, having priced its shares last night at the low end of its range, valuing the company at nearly $32 billion.
Co-founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt have often cited the Occupy Wall Street movement as the inspiration for founding Robinhood in 2013. The zero-commission trading Robinhood offered seemed revolutionary enough, even though neither is a counter-culture figure. (They met at Stanford, after all.)
They were, however, part of a generation that grew up with Reddit, which is where Robinhood first caught on, with members of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit swapping referral codes to get free stock. Meme stocks made Robinhood famous — or infamous. Now it's set to become the ultimate meme-stock stock.
Robinhood accomplished a remarkable feat of financial engineering. It just happens to do the opposite of what its name suggests.
And now Robinhood is opening up its IPO to its own retail traders. Robinhood app users can sign up to buy some of Robinhood's own shares directly, rather than wait until after they start trading. That may look like a move to democratize finance, but there are questions here, too.
Robinhood is going public despite a new regulatory embarrassment. As the company noted this week in an updated filing, FINRA, the brokerage industry's self-regulatory body, is investigating why Tenev and Bhatt, among other key personnel, lack brokerage licenses.
But Robinhood could shake up its Scumbag Steve image by transparently disclosing how much it makes from every trade. And it could get rid of its dual-class share structure.
That may be wishful thinking, since Tenev and Bhatt have few incentives to give up their lucrative positions on top of the company. But regulators are taking a closer look at payment for order flow and other ways Robinhood growth-hacked its way to an IPO. Memes are the modern way we tell stories, and there's still a chance for Robinhood to turn into Stand-Up Steve.
Most people are not aware that Alibaba has a business in the U.S. because we're not a U.S. consumer-facing service that people use every day – nor do we want to be. Our consumers – nearly 900 million of them – are in China. We enable American businesses to sell to Chinese consumers.
---
Join Protocol's Biz Carson for a conversation with Atomic's Swathy Prithivi, Accel's Rich Wong and Asana's Oliver Jay during our upcoming event: Going Global: How Tech Companies Can Expand Internationally August 10 at 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET Learn More
---
Lina Khan said tech platforms contributed to a rise in consumer fraud during the pandemic:
On Protocol | China: Fearing backlash, Chinese tech giants scaled back their overtime policies, said startup founder Suji Yan:
Companies need to play the long game with China, DWS KGaA's Asoka Woehrmann said:
Didi is considering going private. That's one way the company may resolve its issues with Chinese regulators, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Allego is getting SPAC'd. The electric car charging company is merging with Spartan Acquisition in a deal valued at $3.14 billion.
Nanosys wants to go public via SPAC, too. If it goes through, the deal would be valued at about $1 billion.
Microsoft acquired startup Suplari, which uses AI to examine company spending and suggests ways to save money.
Walmart and Adobe are partnering on cloud-based retail services, much like Amazon Hub.
Anne Sheehan is Microsoft's next general manager for Ireland. She's replacing Cathriona Hallahan, who said she'd stick around until her replacement was hired.
Cognizant is hemorrhaging staff. It had a record high attrition rate of 31% last quarter, translating to around 350 employees resigning every day.
"Metaverse" is the buzziest buzzword to hit tech since "blockchain." Facebook announced that it's going all in on the metaverse, but if you don't actually know what that means, Charlie Fink's "Metaverse" might help you understand.
The book includes expertise from over a dozen people in tech who explain everything you need to know about AR and VR, including their place in gaming and social media, and what the metaverse looks like in practice. There's also a companion app called "Fink Metaverse" to help make sense of how it all works in the (sorta) real world.
Alibaba is a marketplace, not a retailer, so we connect U.S. businesses to Chinese consumers. Businesses own the relationships and consumer insights, and control pricing, marketing and merchandising. Alibaba is a partner, not a competitor to businesses on our platforms. We succeed if the U.S. businesses we work with succeed.
Are you tired of explaining the tech news of the day to your co-workers every morning? Let us do the heavy lifting and refer them to Source Code.
Send them your referral link via Slack, text, email, or carrier pigeon and we'll send you your very own Protocol mug after you refer five friends!
Your referral link:*|RH_REFLINK|*
Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to sourcecode@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.