Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev pushed back against AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron, who last week accused the trading platform of creating a “fake market” for AMC shares and threatened to involve the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Tenev argued that once a company’s shares are publicly traded, it cannot control every financial product built around them, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” on Wedneasday.
“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,” he said. “In particular, they don’t control other companies issuing their own securities that reference those shares.”
“Issuer consent depends on what exactly you’re doing,” he added. “And in the case of Robinhood stock tokens [...] those should not automatically require issuer consent.”
The interview was Tenev’s first public appearance since the dispute erupted last week, when Aron said on X that AMC had no connection to Robinhood’s tokenized product and did not condone it. Aron called the practice “contemptible” and “outrageous” and later demanded Robinhood “cease and desist” trading tokens tied to AMC.
Tenev also shed more light on how Robinhood’s stock tokens are structured, arguing that each token is backed 1:1 by an underlying share held as collateral, while the token itself is a debt security. Investors receive dividends but not the voting rights attached to the underlying shares.
Asked whether Robinhood plans to vote on the shares held as collateral, Tenev said the company has yet to announce its plans.
The dispute fueled a broader debate over what should qualify as a tokenized stock and whether companies should have a say when third parties create products tied to their shares.
Graham Rodford, CEO of U.K.-regulated digital asset exchange Archax, argued that there is an important distinction between putting an actual share on a blockchain and issuing a separate instrument that tracks it.
Carlos Domingo, CEO of tokenization firm Securitize (SECZ), also raised concerns about how such products trade. He pointed to one AMC-linked token trading pair that changed hands at roughly 60 times AMC’s reference share price, highlighting the potential for prices in thin token markets to break away from the stocks they are designed to track.