In brief
- Robinhood rejected AMC’s demand to halt trading in tokens tied to its stock.
- Lawyers said AMC’s potential claims could depend on trademark use and whether buyers are misled.
- Lawyers also argued that stock tokens could broaden access to U.S. markets.
Robinhood has rejected AMC Entertainment’s demand to stop trading tokens tied to its stock, with the brokerage’s top lawyer challenging the theater chain to pursue its legal threats.
“Send your lawyers and we’ll educate them,” Dan Gallagher, Robinhood’s chief legal, compliance and corporate affairs officer, wrote on X in response to AMC CEO Adam Aron.
Gallagher, a former Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner, said Robinhood knows “a little something about the U.S. securities laws” and would not “‘DECIST,’” repeating the misspelling in Aron’s demand.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev shared the post, adding: “We stand behind Stock Tokens.”
Aron accused Robinhood of marketing a security that poses as AMC stock without complying with U.S. securities laws. He questioned its use of an issuer in Jersey and argued that the tokens undermine shareholder rights and companies’ control over capital raising.
“I hereby call on you and Robinhood to voluntarily CEASE AND DECIST the trading of AMC stock tokens,” Aron wrote. “If you don’t, our high priced securities counsel has been asked to see whether we can force you to stop.”
A cease-and-desist letter demands that someone stop allegedly unlawful activity, such as copyright infringement, and warns of legal action if they continue.
Aron also said AMC would raise its concerns with the SEC. He did not announce a filed lawsuit or an SEC investigation.
Tokenized stocks are blockchain-based assets that track or represent shares in publicly traded companies. They have recently grown in popularity, generating $15.1 billion in spot trading volume during the first quarter of 2026, according to CoinGecko.
Robinhood’s disclosures describe the tokens as debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited. They provide exposure to share prices without ownership of the underlying shares or rights against companies such as AMC. The disclosures say the tokens are not registered under U.S. securities laws and cannot be offered, sold, or delivered in the United States or to U.S. persons.
“There’s no obvious US securities law angle to pursue here,” Ashley Ebersole, legal counsel for tx, a platform for tokenizing real-world assets, told Decrypt. He pointed to the products’ offshore distribution and their absence from Robinhood’s U.S. app.
“The two strongest potential angles would be if AMC alleged misuse of their trademark that goes beyond the ‘fair use’ usually afforded to the marks of public companies,” he added. “Or they could claim the tracking token creates a false association with AMC that does not actually exist.”
Ebersole said Robinhood could counter those claims by clearly identifying the products as tracking tokens without AMC’s endorsement, limiting its use of AMC’s branding, or arguing that its use of the company’s name qualifies as fair use.
Miami crypto lawyer Russell Klein, who goes by @CryptoEsq on X, said clear disclosures distinguishing the tokens from shares could limit AMC’s options.
“I think that if they make it clear with disclaimers and terms that it’s not purporting to be the company’s shares but is a derivative then they don’t have any recourse other than legal threats and lobbying regulators,” Klein told Decrypt.
He argued that AMC has no property right preventing third parties from creating financial instruments tied to its stock, and that trademark law can permit use of a company’s logo to identify it.
“For me, overall, it’s just: Are they being misleading about the tokens being the stock or having those rights? And I doubt traders think they’ll be able to vote at meetings or whatever,” he said. “But even then, if you’re in the right jurisdiction, you can probably even enter into a program agreement with the stock tokenization company and redeem those tokens for real shares if it doesn’t violate transfer rules, and they would actually get the real stock.”
Daniel Lasko, general counsel at Arcus, a decentralized exchange built in partnership with Robinhood on its Ethereum layer-2 Robinhood Chain, also questioned AMC’s ability to prevent such products.
“If you’re a publicly traded company, I think from a securities law standpoint, you don’t have a lot of control over how people might package your publicly traded stocks into financial products,” Lasko told Decrypt.
He compared the arrangement to an investment manager including a company’s stock in an ETF, suggesting that much of the concern stems from not fully understanding what a tokenized stock is.
Lasko also disputed Aron’s contention that the products undermine U.S. capital markets, arguing that they could attract international investors who previously lacked access.
“I think that’s a little bit backwards,” he said. “It’s promoting more investment into U.S. capital markets.”
Last summer Robinhood introduced tokenized stock trading for European customers. That July, OpenAI objected to tokens bearing its name, saying it had neither partnered with Robinhood nor approved an equity transfer. Later that month, Tenev defended further expansion despite the controversy.
AMC’s objections now put the growing tokenized stock business before another unwilling company.