Robinhood has promised to give its stock token holders the one thing that could wreck its own legal defense; votes, and the real shares sitting behind them.

The offer landed on Monday, and comes only 10 days after the boss of cinema chain AMC called the same tokens a quasi-fake market and told Robinhood to stop selling them.

What Robinhood Users Are Actually Buying

A Robinhood stock token is not a share, it is an IOU. The tokens come from Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, a company registered on a small island in the English Channel. It is not regulated, rather, each token tracks a share price and pays the cash value of dividends.

“This quasi-fake market you are creating on the island of Jersey sows distrust amongst the public about financial markets in general. There already is distrust in financial institutions, you are potentially making it far worse,” AMC CEO Adam Aron stated recently.

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What it does not do is make you an owner. You cannot vote and your name never reaches the company’s share register and you cannot hand the token back and walk away with the real stock. Robinhood now says two of those things will change.

“…they [in-kind redemption and voting rights] are coming. Step one is to scale adoption of Stock Tokens. We’re actively working on redemptions for shares 1:1 with voting for eligible Stock Token holders on the roadmap. We know how to do this well,” wrote Johann Kerbrat, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Crypto and International at Robinhood.

He gave no date, no list of countries, and no rules on who qualifies. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev also confirmed the plans.

Robinhood is not saying Aron is wrong. It is promising to fix the thing he complained about.

Why AMC CEO Is Furious

Adam Aron runs AMC. On September 4 he called the tokens contemptible and said his company had nothing to do with them. AMC shares climbed 15% that morning to $2.92.

His complaint is short, seeing as AMC spends millions a year obeying American securities law. Robinhood sells something carrying AMC’s name from an island roughly 3,000 miles away.

The size of the prize is smaller than the noise. The whole AMC token market was worth about $2.8 million. AMC itself was worth $2.6 billion.

BeInCrypto wrote at the time that Aron’s next move would decide whether the clash over tokenized listings stayed a shouting match or became a real test of tokenized stock rules. Robinhood moved first, and it did not back down.

That is where the trap opens. The whole point of Tenev’s earlier defense is that these tokens are a separate product, so AMC gets no say.

Give holders votes and real shares, and the token starts to look like the stock. Aron’s argument gets stronger the moment Robinhood keeps its promise.

Source: BeInCrypto