Devin Ryan

Head of financials & fintech research @CitizensBank. 20+ years covering financials & fintech stocks. Dad of 3. Long innovation, short free time. Go Irish 🍀

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

Sec lending and pledged-asset borrowing aren’t the flashiest corners of market structure, but they could see some of the biggest impact from tokenization.

Moving collateral onchain at scale should lower the cost of capital across the economy. Big deal for capital markets and potentially the broader economy given the multiplier on unlocked capital.

[Carlos Domingo @carlosdomingo]

Very good post by Stani on what is coming to revolutionize securities lending markets with tokenization!!

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

The IPO summer is here. Retail brokers are participating in a bigger way in the recent wave, where the business multipliers expand well beyond the deal distribution opportunity. Of course I still had to bring it back to agentic trading! $SOFI $HOOD $SCHW $COIN $ETOR $SPCX

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

Some additional food for thought on @SpaceX IPO knock-on effects, particularly for the retail brokers that participated. The selling fee itself is a relatively modest event, but the more interesting areas to watch are the multipliers. Several examples:

1. Trading volume. More than 500 million shares and over $80B of dollar volume changed hands today. For perspective, that’s nearly 4x Facebook’s first day in dollar terms and well above the daily dollar volume of even the most actively traded stocks, including NVDA. Approximately the entire IPO allocation turned over in a single session. That activity flows through the brokers, and options haven’t even listed yet, where the economics are meaningfully better than equities.

2. Securities lending. Has been a light / disappointing revenue line for the retail brokers lately because capital markets have been quiet (4Q25 government shutdown and 1Q26 geopolitical disruption), and thus, hard-to-borrows disappeared - which drive Sec lending. In 3Q of last year, Sec lending was running in the mid-teens as a percentage of Robinhood’s revenue, and it fell by about half to start this year. Even that 3Q level was far from peak, in our view. SpaceX changes the trajectory, potentially dramatically. A small float on a ~$2T company with heavy short, hedging, and index-arb demand is what creates rich borrow spreads. Don’t think most people are calibrating for this (or implications on Sec lending of other large IPOs that could potentially follow).

3. Margin balances. Should build as investors finance positions, and the cash that came in chasing allocations sits in sweep earning a spread. Much of it stays on the platform even if the allocations don’t fill - and again if there are more large IPOs coming, that cash could continue to sit there waiting.

4. Access itself gathers assets. Keep an eye on brokerage and prediction markets apps moving up in the App Store, today was a good day. New funded accounts and money that showed up for this deal, and the IPOs behind it, tend to stick around and monetize for years at essentially no acquisition cost. It also separates the platforms that had a seat from those that didn’t, and we expect issuers to keep wanting retail in the book from here.

The bigger unlock is whether this gets the equity capital markets engine going again. The $500M+ in fees here equals roughly 3% of the entire ECM fee pool from 2025, from a single deal. And for perspective on the cycle, the 2021 peak for equity underwriting fees ran at nearly twice the pace of early 2026. The engine is fragile but looks to just be restarting - doesn’t jive with calls of “peak” capital markets cycle…the pipeline is at a record level in both size and quality in our view. Many companies were watching today closely, and a positive reception in the coming weeks could pull it forward.

As always, trading performance will be a critical factor in what comes next and when. On that point, the market has been selective but I would point out that the top 10 largest IPOs YTD are up on average about 25%…$SPCX added another positive datapoint today.

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

SpaceX day. 🚀 Quite the experience to be at the Nasdaq MarketSite this morning for the largest IPO ever priced! Thanks to @SquawkCNBC for having me on to discuss the implications for the banks, retail brokers, and the broader capital markets ecosystem.

A historic fee event, but potential second-order impacts are an even bigger deal.

$GS $MS $HOOD $SCHW $SOFI

[Squawk Box @SquawkCNBC]

Wall Street underwriters are in line for paydays tied to the SpaceX IPO. Citizens Analyst Devin Ryan weighs in. https://t.co/qmTdDngxSy

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

The @SpaceX IPO, the largest and arguably most consequential ever, priced tonight.

I’ll be on CNBC’s Squawk Box tomorrow morning at 8:20 a.m. ET to discuss some of the direct and second-order effects of the transaction for participating investment banks ( $GS $MS $JPM and others) and retail brokers ( $HOOD $SOFI $SCHW) that could extend well beyond the underwriting fees generated by the deal.

Tune in 🚀

[FINTECH.TV @FINTECHTVglobal]

"We're moving to the next phase, the agentic finance economy."

@devinpryan of @CitizensBank tells @RemyBlaireNews that agentic trading could drive 10 to 20 times more volume than today, with names like $HOOD already moving in that direction, and "really none of that is in models right now."

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

With more “agentic finance” headlines in recent days, just a reminder that the impact on trading volumes likely won’t be linear if/when adoption scales. Same holds for other financial services like payments (stablecoins), or micro lending & borrowing - not to mention the innovation we expect to come from an infrastructure with effectively no time or transaction size constraints.

The versions being launched today are just 1.0, and most aren’t directed towards the “average” or novice customer - that will evolve materially over the next 12 months.

For context, leading retail brokerage platforms like $HOOD or $SCHW see about 3 trades per customer per month on average, but that number is skewed by a small number of highly active traders. The majority of customers are likely transacting 0-1x per month, not because they don’t care about their financial position, but because they don’t have the time or expertise to execute more sophisticated strategies, even those I would put in the basic investment principles bucket.

Asking agents to employ strategies like direct indexing, active tax-loss harvesting, real-time rebalancing, and basic options overlays changes the calculus entirely.

Our work, looking at both robo-advisory platform data and early anecdotes from agentic offerings already in market, suggests average accounts could transact 10x or more than they do today. Adoption will follow outcomes, so that’s critical to track, but I think this progresses to a win-win for customers and the industry,

Most importantly, I still don’t think the order of magnitude is widely appreciated or even close to modeled if adoption takes off - and this isn’t years away.

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

With the CLARITY Act seemingly on the doorstep, one of the next major questions I think still needs to be tackled is the tax treatment on crypto “utility” transactions.

In traditional commodities, an airline consuming appreciated oil doesn’t recognize a taxable gain whereas a person using appreciated crypto to buy a cup of coffee does at the moment of consumption.

Tokens like ETH aren’t just investment assets - they’re the fuel (commodity) powering blockchain networks. Yet, because the IRS currently treats tokens as property, using ETH for its intended utility - like paying gas fees or transferring assets on-chain - can itself create a taxable event if the token appreciated.

If blockchains are going to become foundational infrastructure for financial services and other industries - and I think agentic activity ultimately becomes another huge multiplier to this - tracking every interaction as a taxable “trade” becomes extremely burdensome and increasingly misaligned with the underlying economic activity.

For large sophisticated institutions, the tax complexity is probably manageable, even if inconsistent. For deeper consumer adoption - buying that coffee or sending money to a family member - it creates friction. Over time, I expect much of this complexity will be abstracted away as companies and wallets deal with the gas fees for customers - nonetheless, it adds complication and therefore slows adoption.

That doesn’t mean crypto shouldn’t be taxed, but the distinction between financial speculation and utility consumption seems critical here.

De minimis exemptions and transaction thresholds address this directly, and the good news is there is some positive movement, including bipartisan proposals in Congress with White House backing and favorable JCT scoring.

So, a lot to be enthusiastic about, but addressing these remaining inconsistencies would go a long way toward cementing U.S. leadership in crypto and blockchain innovation - and allowing the technology to scale to its potential. $CRCL $COIN $HOOD $GLXY $SOFI $ETOR

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

Recency bias is difficult to escape in modeling & dangerous in investing. $COIN back-to-back losses reflect a tough backdrop, not the future story of TradFi adoption of stablecoins/tokenization or the “massive” multiplier from agentic payments & trading. https://t.co/m7F8qnj94c

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

@salty_long 🤝

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

Pattern Day Trader (PDT) rule repeal = more freedom for retail investors in modern markets.

But the bigger story might be the connection to the coming wave of agentic investing solutions, which I think is about to ignite a multiplier on retail trading activity.

You can’t have agents operating in brokerage accounts - rebalancing, hedging, tax loss harvesting - if it gets shut down after 3 trades. The shift to a risk-based system is better aligned with that future.

Regardless, bullish for retail trading volume.

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

@salty_long Thanks Salty. This was something we’ve been looking at. An important step toward modernization and further democratization… but as I mentioned, I think could unlock much more than that.

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

Expect to see others follow here. It will be fascinating to track how much agents transact relative to human directed. 10x, 100x, more? Seems like we are on the precipice of a material multiplier to trading volume while driving better investor outcomes if done well. A win for brokerages + win for retail investors.

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Exclusive: Public, a privately held brokerage firm, is rolling out a feature allowing customers to use AI to automate their investing tactics and execute trades https://t.co/1EKdeDOX9o

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

Prediction markets are about to deliver another record month with > $20B in trading volume, up double-digit % from February and >10x YoY. However, that’s a fraction of more developed asset classes like U.S. equities (>$10T / month) and even crypto (>$5T / month).

Institutions aren’t gearing up to enter and exchanges aren’t experiencing substantial valuation increases because people are just excited about the “Sports” market IMO. I think sports are just the gateway, providing enough revenue to bring in real capital and infrastructure for a bigger vision.

I think we have a different take on this than some…I expect prediction markets / event contacts to become an “asset class” that can add a lot of value - and we are only maybe in the bottom of the first inning. $HOOD $COIN @Kalshi @Polymarket

Good to discuss with @joshuahlipton at
Yahoo! Finance. Full interview can be watched here.
https://t.co/pqLHYDJjgM

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

@Nish1Nish Appreciate it!

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

Spending a lot of time reading about and trying to think about what the future looks like as AI develops and is more deeply integrated into the economy. Covering financials & fintech for over two decades, most big evolution points have been intuitive, and if you were wrong on the order magnitude or speed of impact, you could readjust your position as they played out over years if not a decade+.

Today feels different given the rate and magnitude of change which is exciting but also a bit unsettling (seeing this play out in markets trying to assess winners & losers).

To be clear, I expect certain areas of financial services to evolve slower than probably the consensus view, these are areas that are non-commoditized and heavily human - human with strong inertia. Like financial advice to retail investors (wealth management) or to corporations (M&A advisory). These businesses can even benefit in the near-term IMO despite some perceptions of the opposite.

That said, I’m envisioning a world where a lot changes across financial services and not too far into the future. Trying to think outside the box but the marriage of scaling AI + blockchain should only get more attention given the technologies go hand in hand.

Here's how I’m currently thinking about it, open to feedback/pushback.

First concept to establish. Every transformational shift in economic history was about breaking some constraint everyone assumed was permanent.

For example, the printing press broke the constraint on who controlled knowledge. Literacy went from under 10% to over 80% globally. The Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, modern democracy, etc - none of it happens without it.

Electricity broke the constraint on what civilization could run on and moved the economy to 24/7. Medicine, food, shelter, communication, manufacturing - every system that powers modern life depends on it. GDP per capita roughly doubled in 50 years and that probably understates what actually changed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The internet broke the constraint on access. To information, to markets, to each other - instantly, globally, for almost nothing. $30 trillion in new economic value in 25 years. Most of the companies that created it weren’t conceivable before it existed.

In every case the world reorganized entirely around the new capability, and then, innovation quickly ensued that was not even conceived previously. There was a multiplier.

I think the constraint being broken right now with AI is human attention (and its derivative…a multiplier on innovation like nothing ever experienced).

There are 8 billion people on earth. At any moment maybe 2 billion are working? Of those, a small fraction are doing things that genuinely require human judgment.

Everything else is bottlenecked by how many people are awake, focused, and available.

Agents remove that bottleneck entirely.

And theoretically, there's no ceiling if we build the infrastructure (and regulation allows this world to accelerate, where I already see some roadblocks in financial services like around fiduciary responsibilities, data privacy, but those should get figured out). There’s no reason this stops at 8 billion agents. Why not 80 billion. Why not 800 billion. Each one running 24/7, improving, building on what the others learned, no off switch, no weekends.

For the first time in history, productive capacity doesn't have to be tied to the number of humans alive. I think this concept is difficult for most to digest as it’s not natural, but when that sinks in, imagining what can be possible becomes almost limitless (listening to Elon talk about a future of "sustainable abundance" driven by AI and humanoid robotics takes this concept to another level).

The part I think is underappreciated is this evolution isn't just about automating existing tasks. When you take the governor off, the amount of innovation itself expands…potentially exponentially, and that’s what I’m trying to map out. 1/3

[Devin Ryan @devinpryan]

The market is dealing with a lot right now in the near term but IMO probably the single biggest story when we look back in 18 months is the speed of agentic evolution.

When 1B+ agents are trading, making payments, micro-lending & borrowing 24/7/365 - much of it on blockchain rails - financial transaction volume will stop growing linearly, it should scale exponentially. There’s an arms race underway to build & own the infrastructure layer.

Understanding the winners and losers here will be critically important.

[PYMNTS @pymnts]

🤝 Visa teams with Stripe on agent payments.

Get all the details on PYMNTS: https://t.co/L72b2n1Myf