AMC CEO Adam Aron called Robinhood's tokenized AMC shares a "quasi-fake market" and threatened legal action. Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev pushed back, saying a public company does not get to approve every product built on its stock.

In the wake of their social media dust-up, an argument over which kind of token is legitimate has ensued: a wrapped token, which is a claim on the underlying share, or an issuer-sponsored token registered with the transfer agent. The SEC issued a view on Sept. 17, granting a five-year exemption that lets tokenized U.S. stock trade onchain in the U.S. only where the token carries the same dividends, votes and class rights as the share. Synthetic exposure like Robinhood’s tokenized stock is excluded.

Across seven sessions between August 31 and September 9, Robinhood’s AMC token closed within 0.87% of AMC’s NYSE close price at the median, and 2.71% at the widest, as measured in the Uniswap pool that carries around 95% of its trading. While the underlying market is open, the price remains largely aligned.

However, a different picture emerges when the underlying market is closed. Leading up to midnight on Thursday, September 3, Robinhood’s AMC token went from $2.55 to as high as $23.16, which is nine times the $2.54 AMC had closed on NYSE seven hours earlier, before coming back down to $3.26 within the same hour. Volume through the pool during the hour was $10.5 million.

Wrapped tokens such as Robinhood’s AMC are often structured as claims against offshore issuers, which collateralize the tokens with the underlying shares.

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