Robinhood Told AMC's CEO To Send His Lawyers

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Adam Aron told Robinhood to stop trading tokens that reference AMC shares. Dan Gallagher, Robinhood's chief legal officer and an SEC commissioner from 2011 to 2015, told him to send his lawyers.

Aron's first post landed at 5:18 p.m. ET Thursday, after the New York Stock Exchange had closed. The AMC token printed $18.04 against a $2.54 stock inside the 11 p.m. hour, and then the float went from 157,844 tokens to 1.5 million in 18 hours. By late morning the token traded within a cent of the share price it references.

A US-listed company has no lever here. AMC holds no registration, no listing agreement and no transfer agent relationship through which it could withdraw from a market referencing its shares, and the tokens come out of Jersey from an entity Robinhood's own disclosures call unregulated. Minting closed the $18 premium in nine hours. Aron's remaining route is the SEC, and at least 23 memecoins whose names spell his ticker opened pools while he was writing.

Read more below!

WATCH

Tokenized Stocks and Memecoins: Revolutionary Primitive or Retail Wipeout?

Camila Russo hosted Brian Huang and Binji Pande on Friday, hours after AMC's chief executive demanded that Robinhood stop trading a token referencing his company's shares. The three go through how tokenized equities are put together, where the memecoin pairings come from, and which parts of the structure leave retail traders carrying the risk. Watch the full conversation.

TRADFI

AMC's CEO Told Robinhood To Halt Its Stock Token. Robinhood Told Him To Send Lawyers

Adam Aron called Robinhood's stock tokens "contemptible, outrageous, disgusting, detestable, inexcusable, vile" on Thursday evening, then asked the broker on Friday to "voluntarily CEASE AND DECIST the trading of AMC stock tokens," saying AMC's outside securities counsel has been asked whether it can force a halt. Dan Gallagher, Robinhood's chief legal officer and an SEC commissioner from November 2011 to October 2015, answered at 10:16 a.m. ET: "We know a little something about the U.S. securities laws and will not 'DECIST.' Send your lawyers and we'll educate them." The token's onchain supply reached 1,499,255 from 157,844 the evening before, one token for every 600 AMC shares outstanding, and its $200.8 million of 24-hour volume across 30 pools ran on $6.7 million of liquidity.

AMC's CEO Told Robinhood To Halt Its Stock Token. Robinhood Told Him To Send LawyersAdam Aron demanded Robinhood stop trading AMC stock tokens and said AMC's securities counsel is examining whether it can force a halt. Robinhood's chief legal officer answered "Send your lawyers and we'll educate them."thedefiant.io

Why this matters: Robinhood issues these tokens from Jersey to non-US buyers with no registration and no issuer consent. Aron holds no contractual lever, which leaves the SEC as his only route.

BLOCKCHAINS

Robinhood Chain Never Stopped But its Blobs Did Stop Reaching Ethereum For 14 Minutes

Robinhood Chain produced 106,756 blocks between 12:00 and 15:00 UTC on Friday, one every 101 milliseconds, straight through the window that circulated as a 14-minute halt. What stopped was the chain's batch poster reaching Ethereum, in two gaps of 8 minutes 36 seconds and 5 minutes 24 seconds that total exactly 840 seconds. Arbitrum said Ethereum's blob market caused the delay, which fits the second gap; the first ran while Ethereum blocks left 263 blob slots unused and priced them at 0.0086 gwei against the poster's standing bid of 0.0616.

Why this matters: Posting batches to Ethereum is what lets anyone reconstruct Robinhood Chain and move funds out, and Robinhood runs the only sequencer, so users had no alternative route.

MARKETS

August Payrolls Knock Bitcoin Off $81,000

Bitcoin traded at $81,315 at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday and $79,885 five minutes later, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 162,000 August payrolls against a 31,000 monthly average over the prior year. The Polymarket contract on a quarter-point September increase went from 39.5 cents to 53.5 cents inside 15 minutes and holds a 50.5-cent lead, one day after Christopher Waller said he was inclined to hold. Food services and local government education supplied 101,000 of the 162,000 jobs, and the 10-year Treasury yield moved less than three basis points.

Why this matters: Crypto repriced the jobs report harder than the bond market that trades the rate directly, and bitcoin still sits below where it changed hands before the release.

DEFI

Polymarket Launches Perps With 20x Leverage

Polymarket opened perpetual futures to the public on Thursday with 67 contracts at up to 20x leverage, split into 36 stocks, 24 crypto assets, four commodities and three indices. The list carries SpaceX, Samsung, Micron, SK Hynix, a DRAM contract, Brent and WTI crude, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and Fartcoin. It runs on the international site Americans are barred from, three months after Kalshi began offering perps to U.S. traders under CFTC oversight, and Polymarket's 0.04% entry taker fee undercuts Hyperliquid's 0.045%.

Why this matters: An event-market venue now competes with Hyperliquid on price, and the 36 stock contracts put single-name equity leverage in front of traders no exchange has to onboard.