Adam Aron said AMC has no connection to Robinhood’s token tracking its shares and will ask outside securities counsel to examine the offering.
AMC Entertainment Holdings CEO Adam Aron has criticized Robinhood’s tokenized product linked to AMC shares, saying the cinema operator neither participated in nor approved the offering.
In a Thursday post on X, Aron said AMC had “no connection” to Robinhood’s stock-token initiative and did not condone the use of its shares as the reference asset. He also said the company would ask external securities counsel to investigate the matter.
Aron described the offering as “contemptible, outrageous, disgusting, detestable, inexcusable, vile,” arguing that products associated with AMC were being marketed without the company’s involvement. Aron’s statement
Tokens provide exposure, not AMC ownership
Robinhood describes its stock tokens as tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, a private company incorporated in Jersey.
The ERC-20 tokens are designed to provide economic exposure to underlying US stocks and exchange-traded funds. However, buyers do not receive legal or beneficial ownership rights in the companies whose securities the tokens track.
That distinction means holding an AMC-linked token does not make an investor an AMC shareholder or provide conventional shareholder rights against the cinema operator.
Robinhood’s documentation says the tokens are not registered under the US Securities Act of 1933 or with US state securities regulators. They cannot be offered, sold or delivered in the United States or to US persons.
Sales are also restricted in several other jurisdictions, including Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Robinhood Stock Token documentation
Aron’s criticism focused partly on the absence of a relationship between AMC and the token issuer. His comments did not establish that Robinhood had violated securities laws, and AMC had not announced formal legal action at the time of publication.
Robinhood CEO asks AMC to clarify concerns
Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev responded to Aron on X by asking him to identify his specific concerns about the tokenized offering.
“What’s the concern?” Tenev wrote. Tenev’s response
Robinhood had not issued a separate public statement responding to Aron’s remarks. Cointelegraph said it had contacted the company for comment about the criticism and the regulatory status of the tokens.
Tokenized stocks face wider scrutiny
Robinhood’s first generation of stock tokens launched in July 2026. The products were issued as tokenized debt securities and structured to track assets including US-listed shares and ETFs.
The dispute follows broader scrutiny of tokenized equities. In June, Bybit, Binance, Bitget Wallet and MEXC canceled campaigns intended to provide tokenized access to SpaceX’s initial public offering.
Several platforms attributed the cancellations to Kraken-owned xStocks being unable to deliver the underlying SpaceX shares. The affected platforms subsequently said users would receive refunds. SpaceX token allocation report
Robinhood has continued developing infrastructure for tokenized assets. In February, it launched a public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 network built using Arbitrum technology. The network is intended to host tokenized real-world and digital assets. Robinhood Chain testnet report
The initiative followed Robinhood’s October 2025 expansion of its tokenization program to nearly 500 US stocks and ETFs on Arbitrum. Those products were primarily aimed at eligible investors outside the United States.
In July, Bernstein analysts raised their price target for Robinhood Markets, arguing that tokenized equities and prediction markets could play a larger role in the brokerage’s next phase of growth than traditional cryptocurrency trading.
The exchange between Aron and Tenev highlights a central distinction in the developing market: tokenized products can track a public company’s shares without being issued, authorized or endorsed by that company.