**AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron has escalated his fight with Robinhood Markets, calling on the brokerage to 'cease and desist' trading AMC stock tokens and threatening to raise the issue with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As reported by Bloomberg, Aron's latest comments came after Robinhood launched a token tied to AMC's stock, with Aron calling the product 'deplorable and absurd' and demanding that Robinhood immediately halt trading. Aron said the tokens could undermine AMC's ability to raise capital, deny investors shareholder rights and create a parallel market using the company's name without its consent. 'Your setting up some kind of fictitious synthetic equity market decouples stock token ownership from a company's ability to control its own capital raising efforts,' Aron wrote on X. AMC would engage outside securities counsel and is considering filing a formal complaint with the SEC, with the company planning to raise the issue with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. No lawsuit or SEC enforcement action against Robinhood's AMC product had been announced at the time of publication, with Aron's statements remaining allegations rather than findings that Robinhood violated US securities laws.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has publicly backed the launch of tokenized stocks on the company's own blockchain, Robinhood Chain, reinforcing the fintech giant's hard-line position in an escalating legal dispute with traditional corporate America. Robinhood Chief Legal Officer Dan Gallagher responded uncompromisingly, rejecting the cease-and-desist demands outright and sarcastically offering to teach AMC's lawyers the basics of US securities law. According to Token Terminal, the market capitalization of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) on Robinhood Chain has reached $104.4 million amid the company-promoted 'tokenization supercycle'. Most of the liquidity is concentrated in SPY ($14.0 million) and NVDA ($13.9 million), while the recent historic Nasdaq debutant SPACEX ($6.4 million) ranks third in the on-chain standings. The products are structured as debt obligations backed 1:1 by real shares and paying dividends, available in more than 120 countries but remain unavailable to US residents due to regulatory risks. RWA.xyz data placed the value of distributed tokenized stocks at approximately $2.91 billion on Sept. 4, up 17.5% over 30 days, with the tracker listing 5,245 products and putting Robinhood sixth among tracked platforms, carrying a combined value of about $103.2 million.
AMC Entertainment shares gained Friday after CEO Adam Aron publicly accused Robinhood Markets of operating what he called a 'pseudo-fake market' in tokenized AMC stock without the company's knowledge or consent. AMC stock surged nearly 20% in early premarket trading on Friday after Aron's latest public criticism, while Robinhood shares fell more than 1% on the same news, highlighting the market's unease about unregulated synthetic products trading disconnected from real share prices. Aron didn't hold back in his criticism, calling the practice 'contemptible, outrageous, disgusting, detestable, inexcusable, vile' and questioning how it could even be legal. He made clear that AMC has no connection to these tokens and doesn't support them in any way, with AMC's securities counsel already examining whether legal action could force a halt to the trading. AMC shares rose about 10% in premarket trading on the latest developments, as reported by Bloomberg. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev backed Gallagher's response minutes later, saying the company stood behind its Stock Tokens, with Tenev later reposting Gallagher's message and reiterating Robinhood's support for the product.
According to Robinhood's website, the stock token is a tokenized debt security issued by Robinhood Asset (Jersey) Ltd. It tracks the economic returns of U.S. stocks but does not grant legal rights or beneficial ownership in the underlying companies. The product is not registered under U.S. securities law, as reported by Bloomberg. According to the company's Stock Token documentation, each ERC-20 token corresponds to a particular stock or exchange-traded fund and uses a Chainlink data feed to publish its reference price onchain. Robinhood says the tokens are backed one-for-one by underlying shares held with a licensed custodian, but ownership of a token does not give its holder legal or beneficial rights against AMC or any other referenced company. Token holders cannot vote as AMC shareholders, and their claims depend on their contractual relationship with the Jersey issuer. The company's July 2026 quarterly filing states that approvals obtained in Jersey do not amount to regulatory endorsement or prudential supervision, with Liechtenstein's Financial Market Authority approving the base prospectus but noting the decision should not be treated as an endorsement of the issuer or its products. Stock Tokens have not been registered under the US Securities Act and cannot be offered, sold or delivered in the United States or to US persons, with restrictions also applying in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.
The spat cuts into a growing fault line in stock tokenization as crypto firms, fintechs like Robinhood and Wall Street institutions race to put equities on blockchain rails. Stock tokens can take several forms, with Robinhood's products falling into the first camp, allowing investors to gain exposure to U.S. equities without participation from the companies whose stocks they track. The tokens are not available to U.S.-based customers. Aron also questioned Robinhood's use of an offshore structure and whether the products comply with U.S. securities laws. 'This quasi-fake market you are creating on the island of Jersey sows distrust amongst the public about financial markets in general,' he wrote. The danger extends beyond volatility to the possibility that retail investors believe they have acquired stock when they have actually acquired exposure to a price, counterparty, or special-purpose vehicle. If multiple products use the same company name while carrying different legal rights, market transparency becomes dependent on disclosures that many retail users may not read or understand, creating predictable compliance problems where products are technically engineered as derivatives but consumed psychologically as stock. The dispute comes as the industry accelerates efforts toward 24-hour stock trading, with traditional exchanges including Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange also pursuing tokenized stock initiatives, while the SEC is preparing a roundtable on September 17 focused on 24-hour trading in U.S. equities.
