Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev responded to the controversy over tokenized stocks, stating that once a company has gone public, it cannot control whether other institutions develop financial products around its stock. This statement comes as tensions escalate between AMC and Robinhood over stock tokenization.
Dispute centers on issuer authority
Tenev stated that publicly traded companies can determine the rights and obligations associated with their issued shares, but this does not mean they can control all external products related to those shares. According to him, companies cannot prevent other firms from issuing securities that "reference these stocks."
Tenev also stated that whether issuer consent is required depends on the specific product structure. If the relevant product is issued by an independent entity and backed by underlying shares, such tokenized securities should not be presumed to require approval from the listed company.
AMC publicly opposes the related arrangements
This response follows criticism from AMC CEO Adam Aron, who argued that Robinhood’s tokenized stocks undermine the traditional relationship between publicly traded companies and their shareholders, sparking broader market discussions about shareholder rights and ownership identity.
Holding coins does not equal direct ownership of shares.
Tokenization typically refers to issuing digital representations of real-world assets or securities on a blockchain network. The report notes that holding such tokenized assets does not mean the holder directly owns the underlying asset itself.
This means that the rights associated with the relevant products still depend on the issuance structure and the correspondence between the tokens and the underlying shares. The dispute has once again brought the legal status of tokenized securities into the spotlight of the market.