The public fight between AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron and Robinhood over tokenized AMC shares spread on Friday into a dispute among the firms that build tokenized-stock products, over which of three incompatible designs should become the standard. The SEC has already sorted the models into separate legal categories, and each carries different risks for holders.
The AMC dispute did not stay contained to AMC. By Friday it had turned into an argument over which of three tokenized-stock market designs deserves to win, with executives from Dinari, Robinhood and Uniswap trading public jabs over the same underlying question: what does a holder of a tokenized share actually own.
Three Designs, Three Sets Of Rights
The models differ in what the token represents. Robinhood's stock tokens are debt securities issued by an unregulated Jersey entity, sold only outside the US, that pay economic exposure but confer no claim on the underlying company. Ondo, xStocks and Dinari instead hold the referenced shares through regulated intermediaries and pass the economics through, with Dinari the only one of the three selling to US investors. Securitize and Superstate put a company's own registered shares onchain directly, keeping the issuer and its transfer agent inside the transaction.
Executives Trade Public Jabs
Dinari co-founder Gabriel Otte opened Friday's argument at 12:18 p.m. ET, then named Robinhood and Ondo directly six minutes later. According to The Defiant: Otte wrote of their tokens that they are "indisputably worse for the end investors than even common stocks". Uniswap founder Hayden Adams answered hours later, comparing Robinhood's and Ondo's stock tokens to early stablecoins, arguing they meet demand for round-the-clock, borderless trading that nothing else currently serves.
The SEC Already Picked Categories
The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance mapped the three models in a Jan. 28 statement, and the category a token falls into determines which securities laws apply and what a holder can claim in a bankruptcy. The staff also flagged the counterparty risk the AMC episode raised: holders of third-party tokens may face exposure to the third party's own bankruptcy that a holder of the underlying security would not face.
Robinhood's Volume Outruns Its Book
Tokenized stocks hold $2.91 billion, up 14.4% in 30 days across 2.67 million holders, rwa.xyz data shows, with Ondo leading at $869.6 million and Robinhood at $133.2 million. Yet Robinhood Chain turned over $1.56 billion of DEX volume in 24 hours, more than double the level a week earlier, even though Robinhood's book is a sixth the size of Ondo's.
Source: The Defiant
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