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Robinhood CEO argues AMC stock tokens should not require issuer consent
Vlad Tenev said token holders receive no voting rights tied to the underlying AMC shares, and Robinhood has not announced voting plans.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said Robinhood Stock Tokens should not automatically require consent from the underlying stock issuer, even though the product references shares of a public company. Speaking in a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview on Wednesday, Sept. 9, Tenev argued that issuers control the rights and obligations of the securities they issue, but not everything about separate securities issued by other entities that reference those shares.
Tenev acknowledged that token holders do not receive voting rights attached to the underlying shares. He also said Robinhood has not really announced plans for the voting aspect of how the referenced shares would be handled.
Robinhood’s disclosures describe Stock Tokens as tokenized debt securities issued by a separate entity, Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, or RHJ. The products are designed to give economic exposure to underlying publicly traded shares, while providing investors no legal or beneficial rights in or against the company that issued the referenced shares.
According to the report, Robinhood says each token is backed one-for-one by corresponding stock held by a U.S. custodian, with dividend economics delivered through a mechanism that reinvests cash distributions into more underlying shares and increases a multiplier applied to the token. The dispute with AMC Entertainment centers on the structure, with Tenev saying a separate issuer should be able to create securities referencing public shares without automatically obtaining consent from the underlying company.