Former Robinhood Manager Spencer Gareiss Leaves to Bet Big on Athlete Tokenization

In a major RWA tokenization move, Spencer Gareiss, formerly a Senior Technical Product Manager (TPM) at Robinhood, has exited the retail trading giant to take on the role of Chief Product Officer (CPO) at sportsmkt.com.

Spencer is leaving the tradfi giant to bet big on a a startup which is building a regulated marketplace for athlete-backed investments.

Have you ever imagine being able to buy a small stake linked to the next major endorsement deal signed by Cristiano Ronaldo. If his commercial income grows, so does the value of your investment. You’re no longer just a fan, you’re now economically aligned with the athlete’s performance and brand value.

Until now, deals like this were typically accessible only to private funds or high-net-worth investors through opaque, off-market agreements. Retail investors had no direct way to participate. But that is the gap athlete-focused tokenization platform, sportsmkt.com aims to remove.

Robinhood Officer’s Bet on Athlete Tokenization

At Robinhood, Gareiss played a key role in some of the company’s most complex, regulation-heavy initiatives. His work included helping build a derivatives subsidiary from scratch, launching futures trading, and contributing to prediction-market products.

Many of those products, Gareiss said, began as ideas that were widely dismissed as unrealistic or impossible. Over time, they became accepted once teams designed compliant structures and translated complex financial mechanics into products retail users could understand.

Gareiss now believes athlete tokenization follows the same pattern.

In a LinkedIn post announcing his departure, he addressed common criticisms: that a person’s earnings cannot be securitized, that regulators would never approve such products, and that retail investors would struggle to understand them. According to Gareiss, he heard the same objections when building futures and prediction markets at Robinhood.

“The pattern is always the same,” he wrote. “Regulated innovation looks impossible until someone actually builds it. Then everyone acts like it was obvious.”

What sportsmkt.com Does

The startup, operating as sportsmkt.com and branded as /mkt, describes its mission as building the first SEC-compliant marketplace that allows retail investors to trade tokenized securities.

At the core of the platform are tokenized athlete securities, which represent fractional ownership stakes in defined future revenue streams. These may include NIL deals, endorsement contracts, performance bonuses, and verified memorabilia-linked income. Each offering on /mkt would be structured as a registered security rather than a fan token or NFT. It will come with ownership rights and distributions governed by federal securities law and SEC registered.

The investment flow mirrors traditional capital markets. Athletes could onboard to the platform after due diligence and verification of contracts and earnings projections. Investors/fans willing to buy can complete identity verification before participating in athlete IPOs. After this, securities would trade on a secondary market with pricing influenced by athlete performance, earnings growth, and demand.

As athletes generate income, investors would receive proportional distributions through regulated broker-dealer channels.

To support this structure, /mkt has already partnered with institutional-grade infrastructure providers. These include tZERO for blockchain-based alternative trading system (ATS) technology, ZeroHash for compliant custody and settlement, and Blockchain Market, Inc. as a registered funding portal under SEC oversight.

The platform is currently in pre-launch, with final regulatory approvals and athlete partnership agreements underway.

Growing RWA Market

The /mkt instance also shows how tokenization is finding new applications including tokenized gold and commodities, stocks and now athletes’ earnings. With a market that is now crossing $25 Billion, Athlete-backed securities attempt could grow into a different category if successful.