On Friday, AMC Entertainment shares showed an impressive jump, rising more than 15% in pre-market trading. The reason was not a financial report or production success, but a public spat between AMC CEO Adam Aron and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. At the center of the dispute are tokenized versions of shares, which Aron believes represent a legally questionable instrument.
The essence of the conflict
Aron harshly criticized Robinhood for issuing tokens that track the value of AMC shares and more than 190 other companies. He emphasized that these digital assets give holders neither ownership rights nor voting rights, making them, in essence, derivative instruments of questionable legitimacy. The AMC CEO demanded an immediate halt to trading in these tokens, threatening to involve lawyers and regulatory authorities.
Tenev, for his part, responded to the claims briefly and provocatively: "What's the problem?" — he wrote on social media. However, Aron did not limit himself to rhetoric. He stated that AMC has already contacted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with a question about how the regulator could curb such practices.
Numbers that speak louder than words
At the time of market open, AMC shares were worth $2.92, which is 15.19% higher than Thursday's closing level ($2.54). During the session, the price reached $3.03, but then pulled back slightly. The company's market capitalization meanwhile grew from $2.27 billion to approximately $2.6 billion. Despite Friday's surge, the stock is still down for the week — a decline of 5.93%.
Notably, the scale of the tokenized market that sparked Aron's anger is extremely small. According to analytical platforms, the largest liquidity pool for the AMC token is about $382,600, and the number of holders does not exceed 2,000 addresses. The total market capitalization of this digital asset is approximately $2.8 million, which is a thousand times smaller than the company's own capitalization.
Context and prospects
This is not the first time that issuers of public companies have expressed dissatisfaction with the tokenization of their shares. Previously, OpenAI made similar claims, whose tokens also appeared on Robinhood. However, it was Friday's AMC surge that became the most striking test of whether meme and tokenized assets can influence the quotes of real companies.
In my view, this incident highlights the growing tension between traditional capital markets and decentralized instruments. While the capitalization of tokens is negligible, if such practices spread, regulators will have to give a clear answer about what is permissible and what is not. Right now, the market is watching whether Friday's momentum can hold after the opening of the main trading session — this will be an indicator of how deeply tokenized assets have penetrated investor psychology.