Article by angelilu, Foresight News
On the evening of September 3, AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron lashed out on X against Robinhood for issuing tokenized AMC shares without authorization, using terms such as "despicable," "absurd," "disgusting," "odious," "unforgivable," and "vile," and stated that external securities counsel had been engaged. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev replied with just four words: "What's the concern?"
Almost simultaneously, a token called MEME launched on Robinhood Chain, paired with tokenized AMC. According to GMGN market data, its market cap surged from zero to over $150 million within 12 hours of launch; as of this writing, it has retreated to around $100 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of $115 million.
It's criticizing a "stock" with no shareholder rights.
Some may still be unfamiliar with AMC. AMC Theatres, founded in 1920 and headquartered in Leawood, Kansas, USA, operates approximately 898 theaters and 10,059 screens worldwide, making it the largest movie theater chain globally, listed on the NYSE (NYSE: AMC).
As of the close on September 3, AMC's stock price was $2.54, with a market capitalization of $2.27 billion—meaning a meme coin that has been trading for just 12 hours now has a market cap equivalent to about 6% of the century-old company it references.
The two CEOs are disputing over Robinhood's tokenized stocks. On July 1, Robinhood launched its own L2 network, Robinhood Chain, initially offering 95 tokenized U.S. stocks issued by offshore entities such as Jersey, providing price exposure similar to actual stocks but without granting equity, voting rights, or ownership. These tokens are not available to U.S. investors and are not registered under U.S. securities laws.
Aron’s allegations consist of four points: Robinhood, as a U.S. company, is conducting this activity in offshore jurisdictions to circumvent U.S. regulation; this “fictional synthetic equity market” undermines the company’s own ability to raise capital; investors receive something that lacks genuine shareholder rights; and ultimately, it exacerbates public distrust in financial markets. He demands that Robinhood voluntarily halt trading of AMC tokenized shares, or else he will assess whether to force a shutdown and report the matter to the SEC, while emphasizing that AMC is “completely unaffiliated and does not endorse this in any way.”
Robinhood has consistently maintained that Stock Tokens are derivative contracts that provide economic exposure, and holders have no legal or beneficial rights to the underlying companies. Aside from Tenev’s rhetorical question, the company has not issued a formal statement regarding the allegations.
What’s rising is turning the CEO’s anger into a narrative meme.
The official MEME account @amemecoinrh's narrative is just one sentence: “The cinema is just a facade—it’s always been A Meme Coin.” Reinterpret the three letters AMC as A Meme Coin.
This meme has staying power because Aron himself is the biggest beneficiary of meme culture. In January 2021, AMC's stock price hit a historic low of $1.91, burdened with over $5 billion in debt and on the brink of bankruptcy restructuring—precisely because it appeared to be collapsing, it became a prime target for hedge fund short selling, with short interest reaching as high as about 25% of its outstanding shares.
Retail investors on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets seized on this, banded together to buy large volumes of call options, forcing market makers to buy the underlying stock to hedge their exposure, creating a dual push of short squeeze and gamma squeeze: on January 27, the stock surged 301% in a single day and reached a historical high of $72.62 during intraday trading on June 2. Aron subsequently issued continuous secondary offerings, raising approximately $2 billion for the year and pulling the company back from the brink of bankruptcy.
(Note: AMC completed a 1:10 reverse stock split and merged APE shares on August 24, 2023; the above price reflects the actual trading price at that time and cannot be directly compared to today’s stock price of $2.54.)
At the time, he fully embraced the persona: retail investors called themselves the "Apes" and referred to him as the "Silverback"; he even donated $50,000 to the Gorilla Conservation Fund—a title that still appears on his Twitter bio.
He is also no stranger to cryptocurrency. In November 2021, AMC began accepting BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC for movie tickets; in January 2022, Aron launched a Twitter poll asking whether to add Dogecoin, with over two-thirds voting in favor, and in April of the same year, AMC’s mobile app officially supported Dogecoin and Shiba Inu payments via BitPay. In other words, he welcomes meme coins for buying popcorn—but opposes using his equity to create synthetic assets. He draws a clear line here, and this conflict should not be simplistically framed as “a traditional CEO who doesn’t understand on-chain.”
Robinhood also played a role in that story. On January 28, 2021, it temporarily restricted users from buying GME and AMC, allowing only sales—not purchases—seen by retail investors as a cardinal sin. Robinhood claimed it had to limit purchases of certain stocks because its clearing house raised capital requirements to account for the high volatility of leveraged positions. Tenev later apologized before a congressional hearing. Five years later, the same company, the same stock, is sparking the same debate once again, in a different form.
After a massive Meme surge, there are always wealth stories. According to Lookonchain, one address spent $2,972 to buy 16.11 million MEME tokens and achieved a paper profit of over $2.1 million in less than 12 hours, yielding a return of 713x; Frank, founder of the NFT project DeGods, spent $1,491 to buy 11 million MEME tokens, with his holdings briefly exceeding $1.2 million, for a return of approximately 810x.
After the backlash, AMC rose 18%.
The actual AMC stock price rose on its own. Ahead of the U.S. market open on September 4, AMC surged over 15% to $2.94, bringing its market capitalization back to approximately $2.7 billion. This public accusation, framed as being “in the interest of investor protection,” had the most immediate effect of generating a surge of attention for AMC itself—mirroring the logic of 2021, except this time the spark came from the CEO himself.
Legally, AMC has only retained lawyers to investigate—whether to file a lawsuit or to halt it remains uncertain, and the offshore issuance structure was specifically designed to circumvent such jurisdictional issues. On the market side, MEME is just one of many AMC-related meme coins on Robinhood Chain, exemplifying the classic “controversy equals alpha”: conflict generates narrative, and narrative drives liquidity.