Robinhood CEO says companies can’t control how their stock gets tokenized

Vlad Tenev has a simple answer for the CEOs who want him to stop tokenizing their companies’ shares: once a stock trades publicly, you’ve lost the ability to control what financial products reference it.

The Robinhood CEO made that argument during a CNBC interview on September 9, 2026, drawing a clean line between what issuers own and what they can actually police. The comments come as a very public feud with AMC Entertainment’s chief executive has put the entire concept of tokenized equities under an uncomfortable spotlight.

The argument Tenev is making

Tenev’s position rests on a distinction that sounds technical but is actually fairly intuitive. A company controls the rights and obligations baked into its own shares, including dividends, voting power, and corporate governance mechanics. What it cannot control is a separate financial entity building a product that tracks those shares from the outside.

Robinhood’s tokenized stocks are structured as debt securities and issued through a separate entity, not by the underlying companies themselves. They are designed to track the price and dividends of U.S.-listed shares on a 1:1 basis, giving non-U.S. investors economic exposure to American equities without actually handing them the underlying stock.

The critical caveat: token holders get no voting rights. They are economic participants, not shareholders in any traditional sense. And for now, these products are unavailable to U.S. investors entirely, with Robinhood waiting on regulatory clarity before extending access domestically.

Why AMC’s CEO is furious

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron has been the loudest critic of Robinhood’s approach, publicly labeling the token products a “fake market” that damages the relationship between a company and its actual investors.

Aron has gone further than criticism, threatening to involve the SEC in the matter. That threat carries real weight given the current regulatory climate around tokenized securities, where the legal framework remains genuinely unsettled.

The regulatory picture and what comes next

Robinhood has rolled out its tokenized stock products across more than 120 countries, including significant reach into European markets.

Tenev has been explicit about wanting U.S. regulators to build a formal framework for tokenized stocks. His pitch to regulators centers on practical benefits: reduced settlement risk, expanded market access, and trading functionality that goes beyond what traditional brokerage infrastructure can offer.

When voting rights and ownership are separated from economic exposure, the questions about investor protection become sharper, not softer. Who is responsible for ensuring token holders receive accurate dividend tracking? What happens to token holders if the issuing entity, the separate vehicle Robinhood uses, faces insolvency? For investors currently using Robinhood’s tokenized products outside the U.S., the 1:1 backing claim provides some comfort on price tracking, but the legal protections that come with share ownership simply do not transfer.

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