Adam Aron, chairman and CEO of the U.S. cinema chain AMC, posted on X on September 4 Taiwan time, saying that he discovered Robinhood had turned AMC stock, along with the stock of more than 190 other U.S. companies, into tokens that can be traded on the blockchain, without AMC being asked at any point.

He used six negative adjectives in one breath, including three of them: “contemptible, outrageous, disgusting” — despicable, outrageous, and revolting. He stressed that AMC has nothing to do with this matter and would absolutely not endorse it, and that outside securities lawyers have already been brought in.

However, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s response consists of only three English words: “What’s the concern?”

This “stock token” that has already been sold in more than 120 countries has another name in Robinhood Chain’s official documents: tokenised debt securities (tokenized debt securities). The issuer is Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, registered outside the coast of the United Kingdom in Jersey.

That same document also says: this product lets you make or lose money following the price of the underlying stock, but it cannot grant investors any legal rights over those stocks—or over the companies that issued those stocks.

In other words, when you buy an “AMC token,” legally you’re not an AMC shareholder—you’re just a creditor of Robinhood’s New Jersey subsidiary company. It promises to settle with you based on AMC’s stock price, that’s all.

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On September 3, AMC’s closing price on the NYSE was $2.54. But according to a report on Dynamic Zone on September 5, within the same period the quoted price of the AMC token on Robinhood Chain was $3.91—54% higher than the real stock.

Additional clarification: on-chain tokens don’t have a broker matching buy and sell orders for you. The price is calculated by individual “pools.” When the ratio of the two tokens inside the pool changes, the price changes accordingly.

As for the 54.2% liquidity of that AMC token, it comes from a pool that was paired with the meme coin “MEME.” That pool was created 6.7 hours earlier than the pool that pairs with the stablecoin.

In other words, how much it’s worth; more than half of it is determined by the trading volume of a single meme coin, and it has nothing to do with this movie theater’s business.

Maybe you’d say, I didn’t buy U.S. stock tokens on Robinhood, so what does this have to do with me?

But among those 190-plus tickers, there is one called TSM—the on-chain version of the stock that TSMC is listed as in the U.S. The TAIWAN coin that Big Brother MaJi released on September 1 is mainly paired with its liquidity pool.

And that “TSMC,” which is being used as the asset to support the bottom pool, is the same batch of goods as the AMC token: same issuing entity and the same disclaimer terms.

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Based on my observations, the thing that is truly worth Taiwanese readers remembering is this: as long as something’s name is similar enough, we automatically treat it as that original thing.

The token is called AMC, so we’ll treat it as AMC’s stock; the token is called TSM, so we’ll treat it as TSMC. But what determines its quoted price is what the other half of the liquidity pool contains.

So I think what you should be concerned about on-chain might not be volatility—what exactly is the certificate you hold?

Even if the price drops and could rise back later, the value behind the certificate you hold—and who issued it—won’t change just because it rebounds.

If one day you see an on-chain version of TSMC, would you first check its quoted price, or first find out who issued it?

Feel free to share with me~

⚠️ The information above is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice.