AMC Chief Asks Robinhood Whether Its Stock Tokens Are Fully Backed
AMC Entertainment chief executive Adam Aron asked Robinhood yesterday (Saturday) whether the shares backing its AMC stock tokens are still there once some are lent to short sellers. He put the question on X to Robinhood chief executive Vlad Tenev and chief legal officer Dan Gallagher.
Aron called the token model “abhorrent” and said it turned investing into a “gamified business-oriented casino.” Robinhood describes each stock token as a debt security backed one-for-one by a share held as collateral, with dividend adjustments and no voting rights.
Hey there @DanGallagherDC, in the past week you and @vladtenev CEO of Robinhood have made public comments defending your use of and “standing behind” your relatively new Stock Token concept. I think this practice is abhorrent. It defeats the very ethos of share ownership.…
— Adam Aron (@CEOAdam) September 13, 2026
Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited issues the tokens. They track more than 190 US stocks and exchange-traded funds and are sold in more than 120 countries, and US persons cannot buy them.
The collateral question reaches beyond one cinema chain. Tokenized equities were worth about $13.4 billion on September 1, up from $2.5 billion at the start of the year, according to CoinShares figures cited by Markets Media.
Robinhood is one of several platforms issuing such tokens without the consent of the companies they track, and it has faced the backing question before.
Lithuania Asked First
When Robinhood rolled out the tokens in the European Union in June 2025, its shares hit a record high and OpenAI said tokens carrying its name were not OpenAI equity.
The Bank of Lithuania, Robinhood’s lead regulator in the bloc, then asked the company to explain the structure of its OpenAI and SpaceX tokens and how it described them to customers.
Since then the product has left the app. Robinhood Chain went live on July 1, and the tokens can now be posted as collateral in decentralized finance protocols, a plan Tenev set out in November.
Ten Days From “Vile” to “Hug It Out”
The dispute began on September 3, when Aron wrote on X that Robinhood had listed a product tracking AMC among more than 190 companies without AMC’s knowledge. He described the practice as contemptible and vile, asked how it could be legal and said outside securities counsel would look at it.
Robinhood apparently is behind an effort related to “tokenized real-world assets including Stock Tokens” for AMC Entertainment (and supposedly 190+ other companies). They are not registered under U.S. securities laws !!!!!!I find this practice to be contemptible, outrageous,…
— Adam Aron (@CEOAdam) September 3, 2026
A day later he demanded that Robinhood stop trading the token and said he would take the matter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Tenev replied by asking what the concern was. Gallagher, a former SEC commissioner, wrote that the company knew the US securities laws and would not stop.
What’s the concern?
— Vlad Tenev (@vladtenev) September 4, 2026
Asked about the row at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Tenev said he was open to a debate and suggested the two chief executives could “hug it out.” He repeated that the tokens do not need AMC’s consent. Three days later Aron posted his collateral question.
Two Jersey Issuers and One Nasdaq Model
Robinhood’s tokens are not the only ones issued from the Channel Islands. Kraken’s xStocks come from Jersey-registered Backed Assets (JE) Limited, carry no voting rights either, and had more than $800 million in backing assets and 300,000 holders as of Friday, by the company’s own count.
Nasdaq on Thursday put $100 million into Kraken’s parent Payward to distribute tokens of Nasdaq-listed shares that, according to Nasdaq’s statement, will carry the same voting rights as the shares themselves.
The SEC drew the line between the two models in January. Its staff said the format of a security does not change the law that applies to it, and that holders of third-party tokens carry the issuer’s own business risk, including bankruptcy.
Graham Rodford, chief executive of the Archax exchange, told CoinDesk that “a tokenized stock should mean the stock, tokenized.” Robinhood had not publicly answered the share-lending question by Sunday afternoon.
Robinhood added 100 stock tokens in a single batch on August 13. Tenev told the same Goldman Sachs audience that the company wants half of its revenue to come from outside the United States within ten years.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.
