Robinhood’s CEO said that companies cannot control the tokenization of their shares

• Vlad Tenev responded to criticism from AMC CEO Adam Aron over the launch of Stock Tokens.
• He said public companies cannot bar third parties from creating financial instruments pegged to their shares.
• Robinhood’s tokens are backed by the underlying securities, but they do not grant holders ownership or voting rights in the relevant companies.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said public companies cannot control every financial product built on top of their shares. He made the remarks in response to criticism from AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron in a CNBC interview.

The comments concern Robinhood’s Stock Tokens, including a product pegged to AMC shares. Aron previously accused the platform of creating a parallel market without the company’s consent and questioned the legality of the model.

Tenev disagreed. He said issuers define the rights and obligations attached to the shares they issue, but that does not give them control over third-party financial instruments that use those shares as the underlying asset.

“Issuers should control the rights and obligations of the shares they issue, but that doesn’t mean they control everything,” Tenev said.

He added that issuer consent depends on the specific product structure, and in the case of Robinhood’s Stock Tokens it should not be automatically required. As analogies, the company’s CEO cited American depositary receipts (ADRs), ETFs, and structured products.

According to Tenev, Stock Tokens are backed by the underlying shares on a 1:1 basis. The tokens themselves are debt securities. 

Holders gain economic exposure to the relevant shares and dividends, but they do not receive voting rights. Robinhood has not yet said how it plans to handle the voting rights attached to the shares used to back the tokens.

This structure is also described in Robinhood’s official documentation. The issuer of the Stock Tokens is Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited. The instruments are tokenized debt securities and do not grant owners legal or beneficial rights in the company whose shares underlie them.

The conflict began in early September 2026. Aron drew attention to Robinhood’s issuance of tokens linked to AMC shares and more than 190 other companies. He stressed that AMC was not involved in creating the instrument and had not given its consent.

Later, the AMC CEO demanded that Robinhood stop trading Stock Tokens linked to the company and said he was ready to bring in lawyers and file a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). One of his key objections was that token holders get price exposure to AMC, but not the rights of ordinary shareholders.

“This quasi-fake market you’re creating on the island of Jersey is undermining public trust in financial markets as a whole,” Aron said.

Robinhood’s chief legal officer Dan Gallagher, who previously served as an SEC commissioner, also rejected AMC’s demands. Tenev later said the company continues to support Stock Tokens.

Notably, the conflict spilled beyond the debate over the legal status of tokenized assets. Against this backdrop, a meme coin tied to tokenized AMC, MEME, appeared on Robinhood Chain. Over 24 hours, its FDV surged by 206,400% to $131.7 million, with trading volume at $41.5 million.

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The discussion around AMC also touched on the broader question of what exactly should be considered a tokenized stock. Graham Rodford, CEO of the U.K.-regulated crypto exchange Archax, pointed to a major difference between moving the share itself onto a blockchain and issuing a separate instrument that merely tracks its price.

Carlos Domingo, CEO of the tokenization platform Securitize, in turn, highlighted the risk of price divergence in illiquid onchain markets. In a comment to CoinDesk, he cited an example of one trading pair with a token linked to AMC where the instrument’s price was about 60 times higher than the reference value of the company’s share.

Previously, Tenev repeatedly voiced support for tokenizing the stock market. In August 2026, he listed near-real-time settlement, 24/7 trading, and the ability to move assets more freely between platforms among its advantages. 

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