Written by: Xiao Bing

Let’s review the real storyline from earlier: AMC CEO Adam Aron spent ten days using a series of adjectives ("despicable, outrageous, disgusting, abhorrent, unforgivable, vile") to describe Robinhood's tokenized stock.

Aron discovered that Robinhood had created a tokenized product for AMC stock without notifying AMC, selling it in over 120 countries globally, named "AMC Stock Token," which tracks the price of AMC stock while holding holders also receive dividends.

However, when Aron checked the legal documents, he exploded; the holders of these tokens were not actually AMC shareholders.

They were holding a debt security issued by the Jersey-registered entity Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited. This security provides "economic exposure" to AMC's stock price but grants holders no legal rights or benefits regarding AMC. No voting rights, no redemption for physical stock, and strictly speaking, they can't even be counted as "shareholders."

On September 14, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev announced on X: physical redemption and voting rights are coming soon. Johann Kerbrat, Head of Robinhood's crypto business, added that the team is actively developing a 1:1 physical stock redemption feature, with voting rights also on the roadmap.

On the same day, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also stated: Coinbase’s tokenized stocks already support 1:1 redemption and dividends, with voting rights set to launch soon.

First get on board, then make up the ticket; now is the time to make up the ticket.

Three Paths to Tokenization

In a statement issued by the SEC in January 2026, they classified the tokenization of securities into three models. Understanding these three models is essential to grasping the whole debate.

Model One: Self-tokenization by the issuer. A public company itself puts its stocks on the blockchain while fully retaining shareholder rights. A representative case is Securitize helping Exodus complete the tokenization of common stock, where the token is the stock and holders are directly listed on the company’s shareholder register. The tokenized stock trading platform that the New York Stock Exchange is developing in partnership with Securitize follows this route.

Model Two: Third-party custody + tokenized certificate. A third party holds the real stock and then issues tokens representing ownership. Coinbase follows this route, holding the stock through an offshore special purpose company, custodied by US-licensed broker Alpaca Securities, giving token holders actual economic rights and redemption rights to the underlying stock. Coinbase claims its tokens already have a built-in dividend function, with voting rights "coming soon."

Model Three: Synthetic exposure. Issuing an independent securities product that tracks the price of a specific stock, but holders have no ownership of the underlying stock. Robinhood's current Stock Token falls into this category.

All three models might use the same stock code, but what investors actually get is entirely different.

To give an example: Model One is you bought a house, and your name is on the property deed; Model Two is you bought a trust share, and the trust owns a house that you can request to be transferred to you; Model Three is you bought a note tied to the price of the house, you profit if the house price rises and lose if it drops, but throughout this process, the house has no legal relationship with you.

Robinhood’s Legal Structure

Looking at the product documentation for Robinhood Stock Token, the legal structure isn’t complicated, but it is enough to confuse the average investor:

The issuer is Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited (abbreviated to RHJ), registered in Jersey, British Isles. The legal nature of the tokens is "tokenized debt securities," issued as derivatives under the EU MiFID II framework. The underlying stock is custodied by US-licensed broker Alpaca Securities LLC, claiming 1:1 support. The tokens are issued in standard ERC-20 format, can be transferred and traded on-chain, and even accepted by DeFi protocols as collateral.

The key point is the last one: these tokens are composable on-chain. After the launch of Robinhood Chain (self-built L2 set to go live in July 2025), Stock Tokens can be used as collateral for lending protocols, which is a feature emphasized in the product roadmap announced by Tenev last November.

This composability creates the most enticing use case for tokenized stocks but also amplifies the risks of the legal structure. If the tokens are liquidated in a DeFi protocol, the liquidators receive a debt certificate from a Jersey entity, not the stock of a US-listed company. Are the underlying stocks really locked in on a 1:1 basis? Have these stocks been lent out for short-selling? Robinhood has not released a detailed reserve audit report.

What Aron questioned on September 13 was precisely this issue: If those tokens are theoretically supported by real stock on a 1:1 basis, but these underlying stocks have been lent to short sellers, are the tokens still really supported on a 1:1 basis?

The Real Divide: Who Represents the Future of Tokenized Stocks?

The public spat between Aron and Tenev is lively, but the industry divergence hidden beneath the quarrel is more worthy of attention.

The current market size of on-chain tokenized stocks is about $3.6 billion. Kraken's xStocks (issued by Backed Finance) have an accumulated trading volume of $25 billion, with over 80,000 holders. Binance's bStocks achieved approximately $118.5 million in scale within two months of launch, accounting for about 90% of on-chain stock DEX trading volume. Ondo Finance leads in tokenized fund TVL. Securitize has captured the institutional high ground, having helped BlackRock, KKR, Apollo, and others complete fund tokenization.

These players roughly diverge along two paths:

One is "coming from on-chain, going to on-chain," first issuing synthetic or certificate-type tokens and quickly building volume, then gradually completing rights. Robinhood, Kraken, and Binance follow this route. Their advantages are speed and wide coverage (over 190 stocks in over 120 countries), but the legal structure always carries a layer of "intermediary risk."

The other is "coming from the issuer, going to on-chain," collaborating with public companies to directly achieve tokenization at the transfer agent level, where the tokens are the stock itself. Securitize follows this route. It’s slower, but the rights structure is clean, and token holders are directly listed on the company’s shareholder register, eliminating the "penetration" issue.

By announcing the addition of voting rights and redemption rights, Robinhood is essentially trying to align more closely with the second route within the first route. How far this stitching path can go depends on how much shareholder rights the legal framework of Jersey debt securities can support, which is a question yet to be formally answered by regulators.

For HOOD stock price, this is a risk mitigation signal; tokenized stocks are an important part of Robinhood's growth narrative (over 2,000 stock tokens, covering a potential market of 400 million users in the EU), and the addition of voting rights and redemption rights reduces the tail risk of regulatory shutdowns.

As for Aron’s initial question of whether these tokens are stocks, the answer may be: not yet, but they are striving to become stocks.

This is an upgrade that technology can achieve, but the law is not yet ready.