Consensus 2026: Moomoo CEO Neil McDonald on AI, RWA, and Convergence

Welcome to Fintech TV.

I'm Blair.

We've come a long way from the days of sky high commissions and placing trades over the phone today the stock market is essentially a super app in everyone's pocket, and retail investors now have access to many of the same real-time data as well as tools that were once reserved for the trading desks on Wall Street.

Now this shift is fundamentally rewiring how markets move and how the next. builds wealth.

Joining us here in Miami to discuss this retail revolution and the role of AI in trading is Neil McDonald, the CEO of Mo.

Neil, great to have you here.

Thank you, Remi.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, all of us carry around these gadgets known as smartphones, and that does really democratize our access to data.

So tell us what's happening, especially when we're talking about turbulent markets.

You know it's Um, I started trading 37 years ago, Remy, and uh, I'm, I'm back then the retail trader was as a market maker, I loved to trade against cos they, they lacked information, that's been solved, they lacked access to the market, they, they had to pay for trades, they lacked data and then tools.

And so what I've seen in my career is, uh, so I, I used to used to run a quant trading desk at a hedge fund.

Um, on the Mummu app now, you have all the tools I had as a quant trader just a few years ago.

You can backtest strategies, you can, uh, build algorithms, uh, you can do option strategy builder, um, really, in your pocket, you have all the tools that hedge funds and institutions have, so to your point, it really has democratized access for the retail trader.

Yes, and Neil, I think something that all of us have to keep in mind is that headlines nowadays move fast.

And when we're talking about an area such as digital assets, in particular crypto, we know that some of these markets are 24/7 versus, say, the equity markets or even oil futures.

So tell us.

How important financial education is in this day and age.

So we spend a lot of time and effort.

We have 2000 educational videos, we have tens of thousands of articles, and we have this, what kind of makes Mumu different is we have this 30 million person community that's global.

So um if you can imagine an internal Reddit.

Whereby I'm on there every single day talking to people in Tokyo, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, because global is an investing 24/7 business now.

So we, we obviously offer stocks 9:30 till 4. we, we were the first company to do the tokenized blockchain native figure IPO.

So you can trade that 24/5 on our platform.

Uh, and everything is moving to, to 24/7.

It's, we've gone from an economy.

Um, or a society where things were pushed to us.

Jeopardy was on at 7 p.m.

If you missed it, you missed it.

Now, if I wanna, if I want to ingest content, uh, streaming.

Uber at 3 in the morning, food delivery, I, I pull.

And so we've gone from that society where people want to trade when they want to trade, and so people can trade crypto 24/7, and the equities markets are definitely moving that way.

Yeah, so a lot to keep in mind here, especially when everyone has access to both the information as well as some of these platforms, and I think we're living in very interesting times right now considering geopolitics, politics, as well as policy.

So what do you say in terms of how people speculate nowadays, and what, what can you say to viewers out there who are watching?

So we find like our biggest day of cash coming into our system was Liberation Day last year.

So our investors tend to be higher net worth than some of our competition.

They tend to be dip buyers.

Uh, we saw this at the end of March, this big rally all through April, uh, or the mag 7, it was, our clients were, again, just dollar cost averaging it in.

I think our clients try not to trade the noise, they're looking more at um investing rather than just sort of day to day trading.

Yeah, so one thing that we're paying attention to from both a technology perspective as well as an investment perspective is artificial intelligence.

So you mentioned the Mag 7, and of course we're paying attention to the Capex of some of these hyperscalers, but give us your take on how AI is making a difference when it comes to trading.

So for trading, we launched AI on the platform last year, but that was just an answer agent.

You can ask it questions, it's financially focused.

I could ask it, for example.

Listen to the last 3 earnings calls of a company, what was the difference?

So it does all the heavy lifting for you.

But 2 weeks ago, um, we launched Argentic AI so you can take your open claw claw code codex, you're connected to the Mumu API and using natural language, I can build Argos, ask questions, and let the actual, let the platform trade for me.

So this is a huge step.

So I, I can't watch, I have more ideas than I I have time to trade them.

I get too much information.

So um even myself, I can't code, right, I've, I've spent years thinking about learning Python.

I've never done it.

Now I don't have to, so in natural language, um, for example, I said.

Analyze my trades for the last 30 days, I move my stops around, tell me what the difference in the P&L would have been, and my AI agent did that for me.

So it's, I, I run strategies during the day, I can backtest them, and when I'm doing other stuff like my daytime job, like your daytime job, it trades for me, it looks for opportunities for me, so it's a huge step up.

Yeah, when we're talking about agentic AI or just AI in general, many of us in different industries have different use cases, but it is amazing to see the progress that this technology has made.

So it's super, super powerful.

Yes, absolutely.

And of course you and I are here in Miami for Consensus 2026.

The theme this year is convergence.

So give us your take on the temperature on the.

Ground when it comes to this conference and what do you make of what we've seen so far when it comes to crypto in 2026?

Well, I think, I think the main focus today, people ask what, what's going to be the biggest growth area in one of the conferences early with with Mike Cagney from Figa, and the vote was RWA.

So everyone's been talking about it for a very long time.

No one's been actually doing it properly.

So uh we did the first blockchain native SEC registered security.

So we did the IPO, we were the only company able to do the technical stuff to connect to both Bito and to Figure and to and to connect to the the stablecoin to convert into the token.

On our platform you can buy the the normal stock or you can buy the token and you can swap seamlessly between both.

So I think that's just the start.

Yeah, and finally, before I let you go, we know that there is a lot of focus on regulation here at this conference.

We're going to be hearing from policymakers as well as traditional finance.

So given the fact that you are currently at Mum, you have this storied career behind you in traditional finance, where do you see the convergence happening?

You know what, um, this is probably the most exciting time in my career.

I, I don't know how things will look in 6 months or 12 months.

That's what's exciting at the moment.

I think tokenization will be huge.

I think the DTCC came out yesterday with their 2.0, so they're gonna launch a pilot in July, and that's much quicker than I thought that would happen.

Uh, we have other companies trying to make DTC like custody and clearing mechanisms for tokenized security, so, um, I think by the end of the year, a lot of people in their portfolios, remember, if you own a stock, if, if you have $10,000 of Nvidia, you can't do anything with it.

You can pledge it for a margin loan, but I can't, I can't take it and give it to you.

I can't use it as collateral for a home loan, so people are gonna find that the utility of owning the same economic return in token former is much more useful to them than just owning a stock on a platform.

And Neil, finally, before I let you go, collateral is a word I've been hearing all day, so for the layperson out there who might not be as familiar, how would you actually explain this concept?

So, you know, you have your IRA or you have your 401k, and so you own stocks.

Um, but there's no benefits to own the stocks apart from the economic returns.

In a tokenized form, you can take it into your own wallet.

And you can go to a company like Figger and there will be many more companies doing this, enter into a smart contract, either earn yield on your stock or use it as collateral to take a loan against it.

And so it gives you real utility for owning that stock.

Well, thank you so much, Neil.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for weighing in on a variety of topics.

I really appreciate your time.

My pleasure.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.