Unchained - Bits + Bips: AMC's CEO Calls Robinhood's Stock Tokens 'Vile.'

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

📢 Bits + Bips has its own channel now — full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips AMC's CEO spent the holiday weekend calling Robinhood's tokenized AMC shares "contemptible" and "vile." Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins break down what a "reverse ADR" actually is, why Ram thinks most of this is derivatives repackaged as innovation, and why Chris pushes back using Robinhood Chain's own financials. Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto - https://x.com/perkinscr97 This clip is from a longer conversation on tokenized stocks, meme coins, frontier AI, and the Fed. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/cDFv4OCihgU?si=qdPWALHcmHc97SEc  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. 👉 Visit 1inch to swap tokenized securities, crypto and more. Simple. Secure. Self-custodial. Whatever asset you’re buying - swap it at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt   Chapters: 🥊 00:20 AMC's CEO calls Robinhood's tokenized stock vile: what it actually is 📊 06:36 Ram: stock tokens are "derivatives for the sake of derivatives" 🔍 11:17 Why Austin says the AMC fight reveals microstructure ignorance 🏗️ 14:40 Ram: real innovation looks like CDO Square 2.0, not this 💰 21:41 Chris defends Robinhood Chain's financials Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a brief segment from one of the Bits and Bips episodes this week. The full show is now only available on its own dedicated Bits and Bips channels. So be sure to go to X, YouTube, and your favorite podcast platform and search for Bits plus sign Bips, spelled BIPS, and subscribe. So over the weekend, AMC CEO Adam Aaron, went after Robin Hood's tokenized AMC shares, issued out of Jersey by Robin Hood assets, calling them, quote, contemptible, outrageous, disgusting, detestable, inexcusable, vile. He said AMC has no connection to it and does not condone it. Vlad Tenav's entire reply was, what's the concern?

And Aaron's answer was eight paragraphs in a demand that Robin Hood voluntarily cease and decis, it was misspelled, desist. with Robin Hood CLO Dan Gallagher, notably former SEC, saying send your lawyers and we'll educate them. Ten of in the same minute said we stand behind stock tokens. Now, weirdly, AMC stock jumped nearly 21% overnight to $3.7 on this fight, according to the block. And I think where to start is what is a stock token?

So in this case, tokenized debt securities issued by Robin Hood assets expose people to the share price, not the ownership, not the shareholder rights. They are unregistered in the U.S. They are not offered to U.S. persons. So the substantive charge that synthetic equity decouples stock token ownership and a company having an ability to control its own capital raising efforts and that it soes distrust in market. it's generally. But the flip side is there's 13.4 billion of these things. And to have some sort of price token like this, you're either creating a derivative, which Robin Hood did not really do here, or having the reverse of what is called an ADR. That is to say you have stocks that are backing this token, which you pass the price reference on for. So previously, Open AI had disavowed Robin Hood tokens in July 2025, but this to me is a little bit different. Open AI is not a public company. These are not publicly tradable. That is private stock. Often you need issuer permission for transfers

in private stock in a way you do not with public stock. So while this fight has happened once before, it was not the exact same fight. So before we get into the rest of what is going on in this space and how, as always, meme coins somehow get themselves involved, I want to be. I want to be a lot of to start here with the first question for you, Chris, you have a lot of thoughts on tokenization. You have been involved in this space for a while. What do you make of this dispute between AMC and Robin Hood? Is there a real disagreement here? Is this people not being informed? Like, what are you seeing? I mean, there's so much going on right now where you're seeing innovation, creativity. I'm sure we're going to talk about some of the meme coin stuff pairings that are

also going on on Robin Hood chain, which are very hard to discuss at work because of the names involved. But gosh, I haven't seen this type of innovation and creativity for decades post-Global financial crisis. I totally understand the challenges, but, like, you know, you were at Wall Street. I was on Wall Street. Synthetic products are a thing. Like, they're everywhere. And I think the challenge here, you know, did Robin Hood do anything illegal?

I think it's very clear that they've done their homework if you listen to general counsel. The second question is, okay, like, why is their conflict here? Well, if you're a CEO, you would love for someone to buy your equity rather than because like capital markets, U.S. capital markets are where they are today because it's a place for capital formation if you're a company. And so they're making the principles argument saying, wait a second, this isn't right. This isn't fair because you're undermining the. the principles of capital formation.

And frankly, that's one of the things, one of the core goals of the SEC to ensure that capital formation is available and thoughtfully takes place here in the United States. And so that's the conflict. It's like, hey, you're messing with my capital formation. But again, like, you go to a Delta One desk on Wall Street. Like, there's constantly structures. There's constantly synthetic capabilities. Oftentimes, those synthetic capabilities, you know, we're probably going to talk about Coinbase single stock futures as well.

And futures have also struggled over the years for a number of reasons we can talk about. But futures and spot assets generally are actually helping each other. I'm a little bit surprised that there isn't more coordination. I would think in the future you're going to see companies. Like right now it's conflictual, right? where AMC and Robin Hood are fighting with each other. I think the next generation of this are real companies, working closely with these mass distributors,

and really finding ways to distribute true tokenized equities for capital formation. You know, right now everyone's like every man for himself, but I think in the future you're going to see more partnerships being formed, and that's where the real value is going to take place. What do you guys think? Happy Labor Day in our family, a happy capitalism day.

Let's go, innovation, let's go American enterprise, let's go productivity, growth, technology. A few things. One, capital formation is critical.

Derutives don't create capital formation. It's risk transfer. Derivatives play an incredibly important role. Like, you go back to the original use cases of the farmer, planning for the harvest.

They've got uncertainty on the price when they deliver to the market versus all the cost, time, labor they put into it. And derivatives played a very important role in that risk transfer. That's win-win for everybody. That helps Coca-Cola, helps McDonald's, manage cattle crisis, sugar inputs,

helps the end consumer manage inflation. Same story is true for oil. Now, where we're going now is like, it's just too much. Now it's like derivatives for the sake of derivatives. Derivatives properly conceived solve real world problems. And that's when they stay focused. We had a guest down last week talking about. derivative contracts on polymarket and ice cream sellers hedging their risk that's not going to happen

it's not going to happen it's it's just too much so that's one outs a space the second on the mechanics rob then it can pull this off you know the the other read through behind this is that the spv and the venture markets are just so massive it's a it's a capital market under itself and if you have an spV and it's fully collateralized you can enable liquidity and these securities. You know, derivatives for the sake of derivative is like a, it's like a hammer trying to find a solution.

But when you say too much, when you say too much, what do you mean? I mean, you're not putting the genie back in the bottle anytime soon. What do you think is going to happen? And you're right. Lack of an obvious,

lack of an obvious principal use case. Like derivatives like the mortgage back securities market and the creation of principal. only strips and interest rate strips. Like, you're phenomenal innovations. And you can identify the commercial hedger, the creator of the risk, and you can see how that risk transfer unlocks value and expands the efficient frontier through these transactions.

You know, we're talking now about just derivatives and like, we've gone on these varying niche use cases where it's an intellectual stretch. obvious. In the case of the farmer who can't control cattle prices, much less the weather, they're trying to lock in their input costs and the sale costs so they can fix on their margin and they've got a sound business that's not at risk if there's a bad season. All that makes a lot of sense. It's good sense. But I think one of the issues we've seen in the digital loss this market more generally is VCs have had shiny object syndrome. Now, VCs always have shiny object syndrome. It was 3E printing once in a time. It was cannabis another time. It was this

and it was that. And sometimes those shiny objects go on to be really powerful things, like the transformation we're seeing with AI or defile like we've talked about. But I think in some of these cases, I can run derivatives more generally and just speculative use cases that aren't addressing problems. It's, I don't have no chair to pull out yet. But there's VCs have nothing to do with this, right? This was between AMC, which is a public company and Robin Hood is a public company. Fair enough. I think the general zeitgeist, though, Chris, I think the zeitgeist, though, is all the same zeitgeist. Like, is, does Robin Hood building another layer one? Like, they

built it because Stripe Tempo had it. It was a neat to copycat, quick follow-on, fast-follow response. Right? The legitimate innovation of Robin Hood was zero dollar trades. I don't know about that. Have you looked at the financials of Robin Hood chain? They're printing money right now. It was probably the best financial decision they could have ever made.

Now, yes, it's full of meme coins we can talk about. But if you look at the financials, I think it's, I don't have in front of me. I'm sure it's great. Look, pumped out fund prints money too. I'm an indirect exposure and pumped out fund through six-man ventures, right? So I can, you can make one statement around, hey, will this business make good P&L? You can make another statement around, is this just like healthy and sensible for markets, consumers, and investors? Do our finest minds need to focus their time and energy on let me create scalable meme coin infrastructure?

When we know these meme coins, 99.99% are going to go to zero. Or do we get back to expanding small business lending, access to credit, transparency in our financial system, transparency in the ABS securitization market? We get a win-win on both sides. Totally, totally hear you. We're already at meme coins, and we haven't even got the AMC yet. I was going to say, speaking of meme coins, a couple of observations here. My starting one is that I think this reveals how little people understand about markets, microstructure in general.

So AMC, if you'll remember, is like, again, a movie theater company that burst onto the scene, kind of riding the coattails of GME and thus becoming an investing darling in that same time frame. And they've always had a sort of like, fuck the man, like outsider type vibe to them. Fine. I get why they would be arguing here. But you really need to descend into what's going on to make some of these critiques. And I think they largely reveal somebody who does not understand how markets work, which hypothetically maybe some other things have also revealed in this case in the past. But a good example is this. If we look at what Coinbase is doing, Chris, you alluded to this earlier, which is perpetual futures for tokenized U.S. stocks

versus call it an actual stock backed like deposit token that doesn't pass on governance rights or maybe even not dividends and can be traded by people. Those have two different effects on markets, right? The futures are a funding trade. Maybe they can be used for hedging. But without a party to stand between the futures and the actual price token, right, or use them in a hedging way. To Rahm's point, this is largely speculation and what it's revealing to me is unfulfilled demand

for U.S. stocks by non-U.S. investors. On the other hand, doing the reverse of an ADR is actual demand for capital. You need the underlying AMC shares to do the lock the shares in a box and create a thing off the box. So in that case, the critiques of, hey, we lose control of our like fundraising is like, no, that's strictly wrong. this actually gives you more people to fundraise from, not less, and expands the audience of people who want to buy your stock. So again, I think the micro structure is really important here, and everybody just blitzed past this in the debate in very Twitter fashion to start screaming

at each other without like defining their terms. And that sort of stuff is why these debates are so filled with screaming idiots on Twitter. Yeah. So you're not buying a. AMC equities with voting rights through this program, right? I guess Mike and Rob, well, hold on, let me, let me pause you.

Depending on how you structure it, that depends on the you. It may be that Robin Hood is buying those not passing on the voting rights and that matter. That's right. But the purchaser of the token, the AMC token under this regime does not have voting rights. They are not buying equities. We're agreeing with that.

But like if, From, if these were true tokenized equities, maybe you can make a case that, yes, that's wonderful, because now it's capital formation. And I got to push back. The chain gives you that global tam, that global reach. And I think we just need to separate the two things. Is it the alchemy that's frustrating you? Is it the fact that maybe it's not clear?

I don't know if it is. I'm not a buyer of them. I'm not overseas. Like, what is it that's challenging you on this one? I think you're on mute, buddy. It's really the focus of the spirit of innovation, right? It's like where is this focus of innovation? There's some problems to solve on enabling international investors to access U.S. markets.

Great. That's a one and done. Enabling AMC to get shares traded, you know, that won't actually create capitalized. That's just secondary market liquidity. as we all know, it's primary offerings that create capital. So we're creating, you know, IPOs, venture capital investments, private equity investments. You know, those are things and innovation that I get, that I get excited about. You know, like CDO square 2.0, like those.

I don't think that. We don't think these are CDO squared. They're not. But it's the intellectual, it's the intellectual fascination with complex. Like when Sequoia invested in Citadel, I looked at that. It's the same reason why I'm invested in FTX. I remember, you know, I had a former life doing market making and all this stuff. And it's like, it's like these businesses, they have low up risk like night capital when they had fat finger risks. Like I don't think VC's truly understand the risks of these

business. There's a reason why virtue trades at 10 times earnings and it's a comp for Citadel. For example, that's what I mean by like are this capital is going after exactly what problem are we solving and is it really that big a deal I mean so like these structures but these synthetic structures they're all over wall street so is the concern then oh these are not accredited they don't understand what they're doing is that the issue because they go to any delta one desk it's what like the focus of our brightest talent and entrepreneurs and corporate executives are we solving real well yeah the rooms are all of wall street you know the wall street you know wall street And as you know, I mean, they've got netting. They're solving real problems, right? If you are generating a lot of offshore non-dollar revenue, you need a dollar swap to manage your income volatility. That's like a bona fide problem.

These corporate CFOs, they're not like winging it unless you're the blue whale at JPMorgan. That's different, right? But I'm talking about synthetic equity exposure, right? This is a case of synthetic equity exposure. Where do you draw the line? Is it because one guy's a retail guy and he can't. He's not sophisticated enough to know about it. That's a specific example here.

It's synthetic equity exposure. I think the opportunity set of innovation and the return on that innovation for consumer, small businesses and market businesses, be a lot higher, folks in that talent other areas. This is like a one and done innovation for someone. It's like, I go build it, move on. Great. You enable international access to U.S. markets.

Okay, this is not the transformational concepts that I think got us all excited. Like, for example, like DFI or non-intermediary. Like, that's really interesting concept. Creating transparency on chain with an underwriting counter-party risk or settlement risk. Well, that's really interesting. Now, let's have those kinds of conversations. Developing the first agency mortgage-backed security so community banks could lend in their community and not be constrained by their balance sheet.

Instead, they're constrained by the quality of credit-worthy, opportunities, that's legitimate transformational, you know, internet money, Bitcoin, that's transformational concept, right? This is not at that level. If you like this segment, please like, subscribe, and tune in every Monday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern Time. I'm Austin Campbell, the host of Bips and Bips, along with my friends Rahm Alawalia and Chris Perkins and our slate of exceptional guests. Every week, we're going to discuss macro, crypto, crypto, and the collision of worlds covering topics that move markets and shape the financial landscape. $540 million. That's how much concentrated liquidity sat idle in a given week in the first half of

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