Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has publicly defended his company’s tokenized stock products against AMC Entertainment chief Adam Aron, arguing that issuers of ordinary shares should not hold veto power over third-party tokens that reference them.
Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday, in his first public appearance since the dispute erupted last week, Tenev framed the matter as a question of property rights in securities markets. Issuers control the rights and obligations of the stock they issue, he said, but that control does not extend to everything built on top of those shares.
“Issuers should have control and do have control over the rights and obligations of the stock that they issue, but that doesn’t mean they control everything about it. In particular, they don’t control other companies issuing their own securities that reference those shares.”
Aron opened the fight on X last week, saying AMC had no connection to Robinhood’s tokenized product and did not condone it. He called the practice contemptible and outrageous, then escalated to a formal demand that Robinhood cease and desist trading tokens tied to AMC, calling them synthetic equity and threatening to take the matter to the SEC.
The timing is awkward for Robinhood, which has been riding a strong run. The brokerage’s new Robinhood Chain has become one of the busiest venues for token creation and trading in recent weeks, its stock tokens have grown past 190 listed companies, and the company just pushed into prediction markets and staking. A public fight with a listed issuer over the legitimacy of its flagship token product cuts against the institutional narrative the company has been building all year.
How the tokens are structured
Tenev used the interview to explain the mechanics, which have often been lost in the shouting. Each token, he said, is backed one-to-one by an underlying share held as collateral, while the token itself is structured as a debt instrument of the issuer. Holders get price exposure to the stock but, in most cases, no voting rights and no direct claim on the company itself.
That structure is the core of the legal gray area. A shareholder of record has rights against the company. A holder of a token that tracks the share has rights against the token issuer. Aron’s argument is that AMC never consented to having its equity wrapped in this way, and that the product creates a synthetic market in its stock without the governance safeguards of the real thing. He has also questioned whether the collateral is always as clean as advertised, pointing to the fact that private-company tokens in Robinhood’s original lineup, such as OpenAI and SpaceX, had no corresponding listed share to hold.
Tenev’s answer is that consent requirements should depend on what a product actually does. In his telling, a token that simply references a publicly traded share, backed by a real share in collateral, should not automatically need the issuer’s permission, any more than a put option or a total return swap on AMC stock would. Derivatives desks have written instruments referencing listed equities for decades without asking the board.
More than 190 companies affected
AMC is not the only company in the crosshairs. Robinhood launched its stock token offering in the European Union in mid-2025, covering more than 190 US-listed companies, and the products have since become a visible part of the brokerage’s push into crypto rails. Aron said AMC was listed without its knowledge or approval.
The broader industry has been split in its response. Some executives see tokenized equities as the next leg of on-chain finance. Binance’s bStocks product pulled in roughly $118.5 million within two months and now accounts for about 90 percent of on-chain equity DEX volume, while tokenized equities lead real-world asset inflows this quarter. Others share Aron’s concern that marketing tokens as stock exposure, without voting rights or issuer involvement, misleads retail buyers who may not read the fine print.
| Product | Claim | Voting rights |
|---|---|---|
| Regular AMC share | Equity in AMC | Yes |
| Robinhood stock token | 1:1 backed by held share | No |
| Put option on AMC | Derivative contract | No |
The comparison table is where Tenev’s argument has force and where it also runs thin. Options and swaps on AMC exist and need no consent, but they trade in regulated venues with margin rules, disclosures and sophisticated counterparties. Robinhood’s tokens are sold to retail customers inside a consumer app, which is precisely where regulators have historically demanded the most protection.
What the SEC could do
The dispute lands at a regulator that has not yet drawn a clear line. Tokenized shares sit somewhere between securities, derivatives and crypto assets, and the SEC has so far declined to issue specific guidance on wrapped equity products offered to non-US customers. Aron’s threatened complaint could force the question. If the SEC treats the tokens as securities referencing AMC equity, disclosure obligations could follow. If it treats them as the issuer’s own product, a consent fight becomes contractual rather than regulatory.
Tenev, for his part, signaled no retreat. Robinhood’s position is that the products are transparent about their structure and that the fight is really about whether listed companies can control secondary markets in instruments that track their shares. His answer to that is no, and he is betting the regulator, and the market, will end up agreeing with him.
For tokenized equity platforms watching from the sidelines, the outcome matters more than the personalities. A regulatory blessing for collateralized reference tokens would open the door for US retail access to on-chain stocks, a market most Wall Street banks are already eyeing. A ruling the other way could confine the product to Europe, where Robinhood launched it, or kill it outright. Either way, AMC put a name and a face on the question, and the SEC will eventually have to answer it.