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

0:00You'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 Bits. Spelled B-I-P-S 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 Tenib's entire reply was, what's the concern? And Aaron's answer was eight paragraphs in a demand that Robin Hood voluntarily cease and de-kissed, it was mispelled, deceased,

1:00with Robin Hood's CLO, Dan Gallagher, notably former SEC, saying, send your lawyers and will educate them. Tenib, in the same minute, said, we stand behind stock tokens. Now, weirdly, AMC stock jumped nearly 21% overnight to $3.07 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 US. They are not offered to US 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 so's distrust in markets generally. But the flip side is there's 13.4 billion of these things and to have some sort of

2:06price 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, OpenAI had disavowed Robin Hood's tokens in July 2025, but this to me is a little bit different. OpenAI is not a public company. These are not publicly tradable. That is private stock. Often you need issuer permission for transfers and 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 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.

3:08What do you make of this dispute between AMC and Robin Hood? Is there a real disagreement here? Is this people not being informed? What do you see? 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 in Robin Hood chain, which are very hard to discuss at work because of the names involved. But, but, gosh, I haven't seen this type of innovation and creativity for decades, post-Google financial crisis. I totally understand the challenges, but like, 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, 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, why is there a conflict here? Well, if you're CEO, you would love for someone to buy your

4:09equity rather than, like capital markets, US 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 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 that estates. And so that's the conflict. It's like, hey, you're messing with capital formation. But again, like you go to a Delta 1 desk in Wall Street, like there's constantly structures, there's constantly synthetic capabilities. Oftentimes, those synthetic capabilities, 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

5:13each other. I'm a little bit surprised that there is a more coordination. I would think in the future, you're going to see companies, like right now it's a conflictual, right, where AMC and Robota 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 from 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, happy Labor Day. In our family, we call it Happy Capitalism Day. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, Productivity Growth Technology. A few things. One, capital formation is critical. Derudives don't create capital formation. It's risk transfer. Derudives play an incredibly important role. Like you go back to the original

6:16use case of the farmer, climbing 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 Derudives played a very important role in that risk transfer. That's win-win for everybody. That helps Coca-Cola, helps make models, manage cattle prices, sugar inputs, helps the end consumer manage inflation, same stories true for oil. Now where we're going now is like just 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 where 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 out there. It's the second on the mechanics. Rather than it can pull this off, you know, 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 unto itself.

7:23And if you have an SPV and it's fully collateralized, you can enable liquidity and the securities. You know, for derivatives for the sake of Derudives, like it's like a hammer trying to find a solution. But when you say too much, when you say too much around, what do you mean? I mean, you're not putting the genie back in the bottle anytime soon. What do you what do you think is going to happen? And you're right. Locked in obvious, lock of an obvious principle use case. Like derivatives like the mortgage back securities market and the creation of principle only strips and interest rates, 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 got on these very niche use cases where it's an intellectual stretch.

8:26Not 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. Like all that makes a lot of sense. It's good sense. But you know, I think one of the issues we've seen in the digital assets market more generally is VCs have had shiny objects syndrome. Now VCs always have shiny objects syndrome. It was three 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 in AI or DFI, like we've talked about. But I think in some of these cases like around derivatives more generally and just speculative use cases that aren't addressing problems. It's around the chair to pull out. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But this VCs have nothing to do with this, right? This was between AMC, which is a

9:31public company and Robinhood is a public company enough. I think the general zeitgeist though. I think the zeitgeist though is all the same zeitgeist. Like is there's Robinhood building another layer? Why? I don't like they built it because strike tempo had it. It was a need to copycat quick follow on fast follow response. Right. The legitimate innovation Robinhood was it's your dollar trades. That was a little. I don't know about that. Have you looked at the financials of Robinhood 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 it in front of me. I'm sure it's great. Look up. Up front. Up front. Up front. Up front. Up front. Fund prints money too. I print too much closure. I'm an indirect exposure of pump down fund through six man ventures. Right. So I can you can make one statement around, hey,

10:37will this business make good PNL? 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 at 99.99 percent are going to go to zero. Or do we get back to expanding small business lending access to credit transparency or financial system transparency in the ABS securitization market? We're going to win win on both sides. Totally, totally hear you. We're already at meme coins and we haven't even gotten through AMC. 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, micro structure 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

11:41becoming 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'd 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 US 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, writer, use them in a hedging way. To Rahm's point, this is largely speculation in what it's

12:44revealing to me is unfulfilled demand for US stocks by non-US 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. In that case, the critiques of, hey, we lose control of our 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 microstructures are really important here. 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. Yes. So you're not buying AMC equities with voting rights through this program, right? I guess Mike and Rahm, let me pause you. Depending on how you structure it, that depends on the you.

13:50It may be that Robin Hood is buying those not passing on the voting rights. So that matter. That's right. But the purchaser of the token, AMC token under this regime does not have voting rights. They are not buying equities. We're agreeing with that. But like if they had at 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 tab, that global reach. And I think we just need to separate the two things. Is it is it the alchemy that's 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 that oversees like what is it that's that's challenging you on this one? I think you're on mute buddy. That's really the focus the focus of the spirit of innovation. Right. It's like where is this focus of innovation going? Like there's some problems to solve on

14:52enabling international investors to access US markets. Great. That's what one and done. Enabling AMC to get shares traded, you know, that that won't actually create capital. I that's just secondary market liquidity. As we all know, it's primary offerings that create capital, still create you know, IPOs, venture capital investments, private equity investments, those are things and innovation that I get that I get excited about. It's you know like CDO square 2.0. I don't think we don't think these are CO square. We did it. It's the intellectual it's the intellectual fascination with the complex. Like when Sequoia invested in Citadel, I looked at that. It's the same reason why they invested in FTX. I remember you know I had a former life at 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 risk. Like I don't think VCs

15:56truly understand the risks of these businesses. There's a reason why virtue trades at 10 times earnings and it's a comfort Citadel. For example, that's what I mean by like what are these capital is going after exactly what problem are we solving as they're really that big of deal? I mean, so like these structures, but these synthetic structures, they're all over Wall Street. So it's the concern then oh these are not accredited. They don't understand what they're doing. Is that the issue because they've got an adult to one desk? It's the focus for our brightest talent and entrepreneurs and corporate executives that right you know are we solving real problems? Yeah, the rooms are all in 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 generating a lot of offshore non-dollar revenue, you need a dollar swap to manage your income volatility. That's like a bonafide problem. They're you know these corporate see a folks they're not like we need it unless you're the one way LJP Morgan that's different right? I'm talking about synthetic equity exposure right? Yeah, this is a case of

16:57synthetic equity exposure. Where do you draw the lines? Because one guy's a retail guy and he can't you know he's not sophisticated enough to know about it. That's a specific example here. It's it's synthetic equity exposure. I think the opportunity set of innovation and the return on that innovation for consumers, small businesses, marketplaces, be a lot higher, focus in that talent out there. This is this is like a one in done innovation for someone's like I go build it move on gray. You enabled international access to U.S. markets. Okay, this is not the transformational concepts that I think got us all excited. Like for example, like D5 without intermediary like that's that's not that's a really interesting concept. Creating transparency on chain with under end economy risk or settlement risk. Well that that's that's really interesting. Now let's let you know let's have those kinds of of those kinds of conversations developing the first agency mortgage back security. So community banks could lend in their community and not be

17:57constrained by their balance sheet instead they're constrained by the quality of credit or the 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 PM Eastern time. I'm Austin Campbell the host of Bips and Bips along with my friends Ram Alawalia and Chris Perkins and our slate of exceptional guests every week we're going to discuss macro crypto and the collision of worlds covering topics that move markets and shape the financial landscape. 540 million dollars that's how much concentrated liquidity set idle in a given week in the first half of this year about 30% of the D5 TVL if you're wondering. That's according to Dune Research commissioned by One-inch but there's a solution. One-inch Aqua is the new shared liquidity platform it lets LPs back multiple positions with the same token

19:00balance and keep their tokens in their wallet till a swap comes why does that help because LPs don't have to split their tokens across positions they can cover more market conditions and pairs with their full balance that means more activity across deeper liquidity see how it works at one-inch dot com slash Aqua remember that providing liquidity carries risk and fees aren't guaranteed.