Howard Lindzon, co-founder and CEO of Stocktwits, joins Remy Blaire live from the Ondo Summit to discuss the rise of the degen economy, retail trading behavior, and how markets have become the ultimate game.
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Remy: Welcome to FINTECH.TV, I'm Remy Blaire. Retail investors now account for 25% of all stock market trading volume, nearly double their market share from just a few years ago. Well, joining me here at the Ondo Summit to talk about the degen economy and the future of trading, is co-founder and CEO of Stocktwits, the largest social platform for investors and traders, Howard Lindzon. Howard, great to have you here.
Howard: Nice to meet you.
Remy: Well, first and foremost, let's talk about the degen economy. So for viewers out there who may not be familiar, what exactly is it?
Howard: Well, it's a term I came up with. I think it's funny. Uh, so I do I use it in the most positive light because I own and operate two degenerates. A 26 year old, a 28 year old. Uh, they don't gamble. One invests. One vapes. Uh, one bets. But. So I should say bets. And they'll call me up and talk about parlays. And I'm like, who are you? Like, there's such terrible bets, but degenerate economy is we live in this world where five years ago, if I was an investor in Robinhood five years ago, Vlad and Robinhood were in a lot of trouble. Because confetti. If you if you put on an investment or a trade and confetti came down, the world was like, oh my goodness, your gamifying investment. And that's what the world thought degeneracy was in 2020. Today, in 2026, you can forget the confetti. They removed the confetti. But you can parlay a stock trade with a basketball bet. So if you search on Robinhood, you can go from betting on Nvidia during the day, investing in the video of the day, to betting on sports at night. I think that's pretty big degeneracy.
This is humans. This is the ultimate game. The you know, gaming is a huge business. The markets are the ultimate game. Yoshi over there from Alpaca, Robinhood. Coinbase. Kraken. The ultimate game turns out to be the market, which is something I always thought would happen. Why play games when you can play the real game? There is degeneracy that goes along with that. It's not just the retail, it's the institutions with two times, three times leveraged ETFs. Everybody's unfortunately, participating in this game. So buyer beware. But really an amazing time to for people to learn the language of the markets and to be investors.
Remy:Yeah. And you mentioned that it's 2026. And when we think back to 2020. I know it feels like it should be 2030 by now, given everything that's happened in the first month of this year. But we have gone from the Covid pandemic era to2026, and we're here at the Ondo Summit, and we're talking about the rails that were utilized for crypto moving into institutional adoption. So first and foremost, what are some of the headwinds and tailwinds you're paying attention to, especially when it comes to what affects the Stocktwits audience?
Howard: Well, for the Stocktwits audience, they want to be left alone. Same with Twitter. Same with any social network. You know, on Google, which I use YouTube, I lean back and I trust the algorithm. On Twitter, I can't use the app because it's wired to make me angry, because of the way engagement works, right? You're leaning forward in your phone. I don't really use Instagram, but I watch my daughter and my wife use Instagram. I think they get great use out of that and TikTok. But again, a lot of negativity.Yeah, it starts with our ideas real time. If you post a message, whether you like it or not, we keep it chronological because that's the way the market works, right? It's just a long feed of trades and information Then it's up to the user to curate. So the feature I see is a more. Yeah. You know, again, like any game, especially a global game like the market, I just feel people want to play the game. What's major change is we went from a world of globalization, which was like, let's do business with China, let's free trade, free trade agreements to a world of deglobalization. I think that's just finally, you know, it's a two year old, three year old trend, but it's finally like, oh, America wants Greenland. America is fighting with Canada. These are not things that you would have predicted but six months ago or a year ago. So it's a very new trend. I don't think investors, you know, they're used to tech, they're used to software stocks. They're used to the bang. And now you've got you've got defense. You've got rockets. You've got Europe because of you know, you've got global stocks working. You have wars. You have... so I think that's what people are truly thinking about. And you can see it now playing out in gold and silver and commodities and graphite. So it's very interesting.
Remy: Well,Howard, we will have to leave it there for today. But I look forward to welcoming you back on to our set at the New York Stock Exchange. Thank you so much.
Howard: Thank you.