Half a decade ago, AMC and Robinhood were the symbols of the meme stock phenomenon; today, their chief executives are locked in a dispute over tokenized equities—distributed ledger assets that purport to represent company shares. Adam Aron, the head of AMC, stated that Robinhood tokenized AMC stock without permission, labeling the offering ‘vile.’ In reply, Vlad Tenev argued that authorization is unnecessary and that Robinhood is simply addressing international demand for exposure to American equities.
The contested instruments are debt assets put out by an overseas affiliate of Robinhood, which Aron characterizes as a ‘fictitious synthetic equity market.’ These tokens follow the valuation of a stock but grant purchasers no ownership stake in the underlying equity. Market participants refer to these synthetic iterations as ‘wrappers.’
Aside from their disagreement, Tenev correctly identifies a massive prospect: providing millions of international investors who lack adequate services with entry into U.S. stock markets. The population of the United States stands at roughly 340 million individuals. Retail investors residing outside the U.S. total at least that same quantity, yet the vast majority of them cannot access American exchanges directly or affordably. By broadening access through tokenization, global investment will pour into U.S. corporations. This enlarged pool of capital constitutes the greatest opportunity for American markets in over fifty years.
Nevertheless, enterprises delivering these synthetic assets treat this once-in-a-generation chance as their own, positioning themselves between international traders and U.S. marketplaces to capture the transaction volume, liquidity, and fees generated by global demand for American stocks.
To state it more plainly: Synthetic tokenization of U.S. equities shortchanges the American public.
A wrapper interacts with U.S. capital markets just once, at the moment the issuer purchases shares to keep as collateral. From that point onward, trading takes place offshore, moving from one token holder to another, and none of it reaches the public exchanges where the company shares actually trade. The outcome is misdirected investor demand in an American enterprise that fails to represent an authentic growth in that company’s market capitalization. Scaling that discrepancy across nearly 200 U.S. corporations already tokenized in this fashion, within a market Citi projects at $2.7 trillion by 2030, the opportunity cost to U.S. companies and portfolios may compound significantly.
On September 17, the SEC established a definitive boundary. Its anticipated ‘innovation exemption,’ which allows blockchain platforms to list and trade tokenized securities, explicitly excludes synthetic tokens. Eligible tokens must embody genuine ownership, and, as Chairman Paul Atkins noted, they ‘must provide holders with the same rights and privileges as the traditional securities,’ including dividends and voting power. Furthermore, the SEC innovation exemption resolves AMC’s worries by mandating that corporations receive advance notice and the opportunity to object before an outside party tokenizes their shares.
The superior framework is not merely a whitepaper or a pledge; it is currently under construction at the very core of U.S. markets. A share can be tokenized as a digital twin of an asset held in custody at the Depository Trust Company, which acts as the custodian for virtually every publicly traded U.S. share. Under the tokenization initiative scheduled for launch by the DTCC this year, the digital token and the conventional security exist as a single asset in two forms, meaning the share never departs the national clearing and settlement infrastructure. An overseas investor who acquires that token via a licensed marketplace is buying the actual share, and that order strengthens the market where Americans trade.
Real shares. Real rights. Real markets.
American financial markets are the envy of the world because participants trust that whoever holds a share possesses it entirely. Synthetic models diminish that trust, disadvantage U.S. investors, and undermine the issuer-led capital markets structure. Conversely, the digital twin accomplishes the exact opposite by extending complete ownership to millions of prospective new investors and directly linking American businesses to expanded capital access.
International investors will allocate funds into U.S. equities regardless of the mechanism. Executed correctly, tokenization will invigorate American capital markets—markets capable of trading around the clock, settling with greater efficiency, and remaining the deepest and most reliable worldwide—while generating a generational influx of investment into the United States.
Note: The perspectives shared in this column belong exclusively to the author and do not necessarily represent those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its parent companies and subsidiaries.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2026/10/01/synthetic-tokenized-stocks-are-bad-for-american-investors.
