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Robinhood plans share redemptions, voting rights for stock tokens, after criticism

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Robinhood (HOOD) L2 testnet logs 4 million transactions in first week


CEO Vlad Tenev said more shareholder features are coming as Robinhood’s offshore stock tokens draw scrutiny over ownership rights.

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A bipartisan coalition of 17 state attorneys generals urge Senate to reject Clarity Act

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A bipartisan coalition of 17 state attorneys generals urge Senate to reject Clarity Act


The state AGs said they were concerned the crypto legislation might restrict their ability to bring securities and commodities cases tied to online scams.

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U.S. Senator Lummis says Democrats won't quit asking for more on crypto Clarity Act

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U.S. Senator Lummis says Democrats won't quit asking for more on crypto Clarity Act


One of the top crypto market structure negotiators in Washington says she’s run out of gas on new revisions for the bill she’s worked on for more than five years.

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Three Signals to Watch as Solana Pushes 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading

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Solana is gaining attention as tokenized stocks bring trading onto the blockchain outside traditional market hours, with CryptoRus pointing to after-hours activity and more than 727,000 holders as signs to watch.

But the bigger question is whether that usage can spread across Solana’s network and eventually show up in SOL’s price.

Solana’s After-Hours Stock Market Faces a Token Test

CryptoRus argues that tokenized equities give crypto a practical use case because markets can keep trading after Wall Street closes. Solana says 63% of tokenized-equity activity on its network came after the closing bell, while the number of holders has passed 727,000.

That does not, by itself, prove lasting demand for SOL. As the analysis account puts it, “The decision now is whether Solana’s activity becomes durable network growth, and whether SOL’s chart begins to reflect it.”

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One way to test that broader story is through chain TVL, or the value held across decentralized applications on a network. Solana’s TVL was up 6.6% to $5.86 billion, compared with Ethereum at $49.97 billion after a 56% increase. BSC, Base, Tron and Bitcoin also posted gains similar to Solana’s, at 6.7%, 6.3%, 6.2%, and 4.7%, respectively, which still kept them well below Ethereum.

The second signal comes from Ethereum itself, with spot ETH ETFs recording more than $216 million in net inflows last Friday, making it a fourth straight week in the green for the funds. According to CryptoRus, that shows that institutional crypto demand is not limited to one network, and that investors should use those flows to check if the demand persists.

“A continuing inflow trend strengthens the broader adoption case,” the analyst wrote. “A reversal would weaken this particular signal.”

The third is the wider tokenization market. As CryptoPotato reported last week, tokenized stocks such as SPY, rGOOGL and HOODb posted large gains in market capitalization, while QQQb recorded $4.5 billion in 90-day decentralized exchange volume. Across the category, DEX volume reached $15.9 billion.

“That adds weight to the 24/7 market narrative, but it is not evidence that all resulting activity will accrue to Solana,” noted CryptoRus.

SOL Still Has to Clear Its Own Price Test

SOL was around $101 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko data, having barely moved over 24 hours, although trading volume reached roughly $2.4 billion, up 34.8% from the previous day.

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The asset is down more than 3% in seven days, but was up nearly 35% across 30 days, even though the price is still below the $105 top of its seven-day range.

CryptoRus’s setup calls for a long position only above $105.32, with $98.30 as the level where the upside case can fail, and at its current value, SOL sits between those levels.

That makes the price action an important part of the tokenized-stock story. If Solana keeps attracting stock trading activity but the token stays stuck below its trading trigger, then that, according to the analyst, means that “the infrastructure story may be advancing faster than the token trade.”

The post Three Signals to Watch as Solana Pushes 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Anthropic Claude AI Predicts XRP to Double-Digits by the end of 2026

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Ripple price prediction: Claude AI predicts that in perfect bull-market conditions, XRP could hit $12 before January 1, 2027

Ripple (XRP) is currently trading at $1.39, up about +4% in the last 24 hours, flat over 7 days, up +40% over the past month, but down around -50% over the past year. The Anthropic Claude AI predicts that XRP could soar as high as $12 by the end of in the right bull-market conditions

Ripple’s current market cap is about $88Bn, and its all-time high is $3.65, set in July 2025, so it’s currently about 62% below that peak. Spot XRP ETFs (Bitwise, Grayscale, 21Shares, Canary, Franklin Templeton) launched in November 2025 and have been seeing steady inflows, including a recent $1.7Bn surge.

The bullish price target for XRP by January 1, 2027, is projected to be between $6 and $8, with a more optimistic stretch target of $10 to $12 if market conditions become euphoric.

Ripple price prediction: Claude AI predicts that in perfect bull-market conditions, XRP could hit $12 before January 1, 2027
SOURCE: Claude AI Predicts XRP Price

Base Bullish Case ($6–$8): This scenario assumes XRP first reclaims and surpasses its all-time high of $3.65, then enters a phase of price discovery as inflows from exchange-traded funds (ETFs) increase and Ripple’s institutional payments network continues to expand.

From its current price of $1.39, this represents a potential increase of approximately 4 to 6 times, significant, but still within XRP’s historical behavior. For reference, it soared from under $0.50 to over $3 in just a few months during the 2024–2025 market run.

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Stretch/Euphoria Case ($10–$12): Reaching this target would require a genuinely exuberant, retail-driven alt-season, combined with demand from ETFs and institutional investors. This scenario would involve the kind of low-liquidity, parabolic market conditions that can occur during an overall market surge, rather than steady accumulation.

Technical Analysis Supporting The Claude AI XRP Prediction

As Claude AI predicts double digits for Ripple by 2027, XRP’s price action over the past year shows a large basing structure below the $3.65 all-time high, with the past month’s ~38% rally suggesting momentum is already building well ahead of any broader “bull market return.”

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The most important level on the chart is that $3.65 ATH, a decisive breakout and monthly close above it would be a major structural signal, since XRP has never sustained price discovery above that zone before, and measured-move projections off the multi-year base point toward the $6–$9 area as a first major target zone.

On the way up, watch $2.00 as a round-number psychological level and $2.70–$3.00 as the last real resistance shelf before the ATH test. Volume is the key confirmation to watch: the current 30-day rally has come with real volume expansion rather than thin drift, which is typically how sustainable breakouts (as opposed to short-lived squeezes) get built.

Worth repeating the caveat clearly: the $6–$12 range is conditional on a genuine, broad-based bull market returning, sustained risk appetite, continued ETF/institutional inflows, and Bitcoin leading a real alt-season rotation.

Without that backdrop, XRP’s current setup (still 62% below its ATH, in a slow multi-month base) points to a more modest continuation toward $2–$3 rather than a full breakout. This is a scenario analysis, not investment advice, not something to size a position around.

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Maxi Doge Targets Early Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels

Ripple price prediction: Claude AI predicts that in perfect bull-market conditions, XRP could hit $12 before January 1, 2027
SOURCE: Maxi Doge

A move to $1.39 validates anyone who bought the dip last week. But be honest about the math: even a full CLARITY breakout scenario gets XRP holders a double, maybe triple, over months, not the kind of return that changes a portfolio’s trajectory.

At XRP’s market cap, asymmetric upside isn’t really on the table anymore. That’s the gap presale plays are built to fill.

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The token is priced at $0.0002838, with $4.8M raised so far and dynamic APY staking live for early buyers. The gym-bro humor is deliberate; the leverage-mentality branding is the actual hook for traders tired of watching majors grind sideways.

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The post Anthropic Claude AI Predicts XRP to Double-Digits by the end of 2026 appeared first on Cryptonews.

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Vitalik Buterin Says Crypto Anti-Collusion Rules Could Apply to AI Safety

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has said that the anti-collusion mechanisms he mapped out for blockchain governance back in 2020 might turn out to matter more for AI safety than for crypto itself.

He was responding to an essay by researcher Eric Drexler that used a recent OpenAI security test, in which thousands of AI agents built an unauthorized coordination network and attacked Hugging Face’s production systems, as a live example of the same dynamic he described six years ago.

A Familiar Problem With a New Set of Players

In a September 14 X post, Buterin described a “deep duality” between crypto governance and multi-agent AI systems. In his comparison, the principal in crypto is a static algorithm dealing with human agents, while an AI safety system could involve humans and weaker large language models managing stronger ones.

He pointed to his September 11, 2020, essay, “Coordination, Good and Bad,” where he suggested that systems can produce better outcomes when limits exist on how much agents can collude.

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The developer contrasted the abundance of Nash equilibria in individual-choice game theory with cooperative game theory, where stable “cores” can be absent because coalitions can profit by changing the outcome.

Harmful coordination is not always visible from individual behavior. Buterin used examples, including sellers agreeing on prices, voters selling votes and blockchain miners coordinating an attack. His defenses included decentralization, secret ballots, privacy protections, whistleblowers, communication limits, and mechanisms that make participants bear the cost of decisions they support.

The comparison also fits Buterin’s broader AI safety views, having earlier criticized large political campaigns around AI safety, warning that they could produce centralized or authoritarian outcomes. He instead advocated for defensive technology and systems that make misuse harder.

AI Safety Puts the Same Idea in a Different Setting

The September 10 essay by Eric Drexler argues that AI collusion becomes easier when agents are similar, share objectives, communicate freely, observe one another’s actions, and retain information across repeated interactions.

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Its countermeasures include using diverse agents, constraining communication between them, and imposing critics (production auto-review models, safety classifiers, and chain-of-thought monitors) with the authority to intervene and disrupt potential collusion.

Drexler cited the July 2026 OpenAI agent evaluation, drawing on an investigation published a month later that found roughly 1,200 agents had used an unauthorized message board and about 700 had participated in an attack on Hugging Face’s production systems.

Some agents objected and even took concrete action, including blocking data transfers and vetoing a proposed social-engineering email, but they lacked the authority to halt runs or escalate concerns.

According to the researcher, that happened because the setup “violated nearly every condition” he had flagged in a past report in 2019 as necessary to keep multi-agent systems from colluding. However, a retrofitted monitoring harness, tested afterward on the same model, cut the behavior by more than a hundredfold.

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The post Vitalik Buterin Says Crypto Anti-Collusion Rules Could Apply to AI Safety appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Kraken Adds DeFi Yield on Tokenized Stocks and ETF Assets

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Crypto Breaking News

Kraken has rolled out new onchain yield vaults that let eligible customers earn returns on tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The exchange says its xStocks vaults will lend deposited assets through decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, distributing the resulting yield to users in the form of additional xStocks.

In a Monday announcement, Kraken specified that the first xStocks vaults support tokenized versions of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPYx), the Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQx), and Nvidia (NVDAx). Withdrawal requests are processed within three days, while yield is paid in the deposited tokens.

Key takeaways

  • Kraken’s xStocks vaults generate yield by lending tokenized equities and ETFs through DeFi markets.
  • Supported assets include SPYx, QQQx, and NVDAx, with yield paid in the deposited xStocks.
  • Kraken says vault withdrawals are handled on a three-day processing timeline.
  • The vaults build on the infrastructure of Kraken DeFi Earn, launched in January and reported to have attracted over $800 million in deposits.
  • Availability is limited: xStocks vaults are offered in the European Economic Area and certain other jurisdictions, but excluded in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates.

How Kraken’s xStocks vaults work

Kraken’s new vaults are designed to convert tokenized equity exposure into an income-generating strategy. Customers deposit supported xStocks, and the assets are then lent out via onchain lending venues, with returns generated by the borrowing activity within those markets.

According to Kraken, this structure mirrors its existing Kraken DeFi Earn program, which launched in January. Kraken said DeFi Earn has since gathered more than $800 million in deposits, positioning xStocks as an extension of that approach into the tokenized equities category.

Withdrawals, Kraken added, are processed within three days. For investors, this detail matters because tokenized-assets yield products often differ not only by yield method, but also by the operational cadence of redemption.

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DeFi strategy design, onchain execution

Kraken says the xStocks vaults are powered by Veda. The company also named Sentora as the team designing and managing the lending strategies used to produce yield.

On execution details, Kraken said assets are lent through DeFi markets such as Kamino on Solana. Sentora is responsible for setting exposure limits and monitoring key conditions including collateral, liquidity, and oracle inputs—factors that typically influence the safety and performance of lending-based strategies.

While Kraken did not outline further specifics in the announcement, the combination of a platform (Veda) and a strategy manager (Sentora) signals a separation between custody/deposit handling and the dynamic risk management layer that determines how the vaults interact with DeFi lending venues.

Broader momentum in tokenized equities

Kraken’s move lands as tokenized stocks and ETFs continue to accelerate. RWA.xyz data cited by Kraken shows the distributed value of tokenized equities has risen to about $2.84 billion, up from roughly $540 million a year earlier.

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That jump highlights the shift from early-stage experimentation toward a larger, more established market for tokenized financial instruments. It also helps explain why centralized exchanges and regulated firms are increasingly interested in wrapping tokenized assets into yield products: demand for tokenized exposure is rising, and the next logical step for many platforms is to offer income generation rather than passive holding alone.

However, the economics of these products can vary significantly. In Kraken’s model, the yield mechanism is lending through DeFi markets, meaning performance is tied to onchain borrowing activity and the vault’s risk controls—variables that are distinct from traditional equity dividends or fund distributions.

Where xStocks vaults are available—and where they aren’t

Kraken stated that the xStocks vaults are available to eligible Kraken clients in the European Economic Area and other markets, but they are excluded in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates.

For users, these geographic constraints are often as important as the underlying product design. Tokenized equities have attracted heightened regulatory attention across jurisdictions, and exchange availability frequently reflects local licensing, investor eligibility rules, or how a product is classified.

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In practice, this means European and select international clients may get earlier access to DeFi-linked yield on tokenized equities, while customers in excluded regions will need to wait for further regulatory clarity or product adjustments.

As Kraken expands xStocks, market participants will likely watch whether the vaults attract meaningful deposits beyond the existing DeFi Earn base, and how tokenized-equity liquidity and onchain lending demand evolve. The next question for investors is whether yield production remains consistent as tokenization grows—especially given the three-day redemption timeline and the reliance on DeFi lending conditions.

Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. This article may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure

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Trump Says He Has Criminal Power Over AI Companies: Should Investors Worry?

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Nasdaq, S&P500 Performance. Source: TradingView

President Donald Trump says his administration already holds criminal and regulatory power over AI companies. He made the claim while arguing the industry needs no guardrail beyond himself.

He posted it minutes after Monday’s opening bell, into a market that was already selling AI stocks.

A Boast That Reads Like a Warning

The message ran on Truth Social and opened with a claim about presidential oversight.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! … We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” Trump said.

No new power was announced. Federal prosecutors can already charge a company, and regulators already hold authority over the sector.

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What changed is that a president chose to brandish that leverage while defending the same firms. For investors, leverage over the firms holding up the AI trade points the wrong way.

Why the Claim Did Not Lift AI Stocks

The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.85% on Monday, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.57%.

Nasdaq, S&P500 Performance. Source: TradingView
Nasdaq, S&P500 Performance. Source: TradingView

Chipmakers took the worst of it. Marvell Technology fell 8%, Intel 7%, AMD 5%, and both Nvidia and Broadcom about 3%. AI cloud provider CoreWeave lost 7%.

In Tokyo, SoftBank Group, one of OpenAI’s largest outside backers, closed down more than 10%. BeInCrypto flagged how the AI slowdown rattled futures hours before the open.

The AI trade is priced on spending. Chipmakers, data center builders and cloud providers earn from the pace at which labs train ever larger models.

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Trump’s post was meant to protect that spending. He signaled Washington will not impose a brake, which normally reads as a green light.

It landed flat because the brake investors fear is voluntary and sits inside the labs. Congress set no federal requirement, as BeInCrypto reported when the safety burden shifted to developers.

A president can stop a bill. He cannot make Anthropic ship faster.

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Meanwhile, oil complicates the picture. Brent jumped about 4% the same morning after Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline, so not every red ticker is about AI.

The Fight With Anthropic

Dario Amodei, chief executive of AI developer Anthropic, published an essay on Saturday urging labs to slow work on their most capable models. Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed him.

“The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’” Trump said in the post.

Beijing rejected the wider framing. Spokesperson Guo Jiakun said fearmongering and vicious competition serve no one’s interest.

Investor Michael Burry read the safety push differently, arguing it is really about squeezing out smaller rivals.

Trump meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping on September 24. Until then, investors decide whether a president claiming criminal power over AI firms is a floor under the trade or a ceiling on it.

The post Trump Says He Has Criminal Power Over AI Companies: Should Investors Worry? appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Grayscale Just Made XRP 26% of Its New Portfolio for Advisors

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Grayscale's New Crypto Portfolios

Grayscale handed financial advisors a ready-made crypto allocation on Monday, and XRP (XRP) took 26.11% of it. The token is the second-largest holding in the firm’s new Digital Assets Next Gen model portfolio.

A model portfolio is a published recipe. Grayscale picks the assets and the weights, and an advisor copies that mix into client accounts using the firm’s exchange-traded funds.

XRP Sits Second in a Portfolio Built Without Bitcoin

The Next Gen model leaves Bitcoin out and held seven funds as of August 31. Ether leads at 42.34%, XRP follows at 26.11%, and Solana takes 21.09%.

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Grayscale's New Crypto Portfolios
Grayscale’s New Crypto Portfolios. Source: Grayscale

Those three fill roughly 89% of the basket. Hyperliquid, a trading-focused blockchain whose Grayscale fund listed only in June, takes 5.76%. Chainlink, Avalanche, and Sui split what is left.

Grayscale caps any one asset at 40% and resets the weights every three months. Ether has already drifted past that cap since the model started on July 27.

The Funds Behind It Have Been Losing Money

XRP trades near $1.42, up about 5% on the day and fifth by market value. The Grayscale XRP Trust ETF, however, sits 38.51% below its launch price.

BeInCrypto reported in August that the same trust sold $180 million in tokens during the first half of the year at a realized loss. Six of the model’s seven funds trade below where they started.

The model itself shows a 30.69% net gain since July 27. That is five weeks of history built on one strong August, and the rest of the return table is empty.

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Grayscale Returns on Model Portfolio. Source: Grayscale
Grayscale Returns on Model Portfolio. Source: Grayscale

“Advisors are increasingly looking for ways to bring digital assets into client portfolios without having to build and maintain allocations asset by asset,” Laurie Katz, Grayscale’s Global Head of Distribution, framed the launch around convenience.

Grayscale charges no separate fee for the models, and the underlying funds average 0.23%. Whether advisors read Next Gen as emerging assets or as a large ether and XRP bet under a different name will decide how much money follows.

The post Grayscale Just Made XRP 26% of Its New Portfolio for Advisors appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Trump Phones Jensen Huang Live Against AI Slowdown Fears. NVIDIA Stock Reacts

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Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Price Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance

President Donald Trump phoned Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang live on stage Monday. He told a room of investors that fear of artificial intelligence (AI) is a hoax. Nvidia shares fell anyway.

The call came during the All-In Summit, a technology conference run by a group of Silicon Valley investors. It landed hours after chip stocks opened sharply lower.

Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Price Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance
Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Price Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance

Trump Turns a Phone Call Into AI Policy

Huang was midway through an on-stage interview when his phone rang. He put the president on speaker, and the audience heard the argument Trump has pushed for weeks.

“I’m telling you it’s all a hoax. The data centers are great. They make people wealthy. They make states wealthy. AI is bigger than the internet. These people are playing right into the hands of China. We’re not going to let that happen,” Donald Trump, President of the United States, speaking at the All-In Summit, via attendees.

Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens.

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“You’re right, we’re not going to let that happen sir,” Huang answered.

That morning, Trump had already dismissed safety warnings on social media. He argued that a capable president is the only guardrail the technology needs. He has separately claimed sweeping power over AI companies.

Why Nvidia Shares Fell Anyway

The selling started long before the call. Nvidia traded near $211.81 on Monday afternoon, roughly 3% below Friday’s close of $218.29.

Intel dropped 7% and Advanced Micro Devices lost 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, an exchange-traded fund tracking the sector, slid 6%.

Investors were pricing a weekend essay from Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei. He urged developers to pace the next leap in model capability. Sam Altman and Elon Musk joined the rivals backing a slowdown.

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BeInCrypto flagged on Saturday that Monday’s market open would test that pact. Chip stocks answered within minutes.

Not everyone reads the drop as real weakness. Investor Michael Burry says the slowdown push is hype tied to coming listings. Intel also fell hardest despite holding the least AI exposure. That pattern suggests crowded trades unwinding rather than shrinking demand.

Nvidia’s order book has not changed. What has changed is the distance between what the president says and what the market will pay for.

The post Trump Phones Jensen Huang Live Against AI Slowdown Fears. NVIDIA Stock Reacts appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Tokenized stocks debate goes beyond issuer consent: Bitfinex

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RedStone brings instant exits to NYLIM tokenized fund

Bitfinex Securities has argued that the tokenized stocks debate must distinguish between third-party products and issuer-backed securities because each model gives investors different rights.

Summary

  • Bitfinex Securities says issuer consent is only one part of the tokenized stocks debate.
  • Third-party tokens may reference shares without giving holders ownership or voting rights.
  • Private-company products can leave token buyers with less information than direct investors receive.
  • Transfer controls and market monitoring remain central concerns for blockchain-based stock products.

Tokenized stocks require clear investor rights

Bitfinex Securities Head of Operations Jesse Knutson told crypto.news that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was “directionally correct” to reject a blanket issuer veto, but said the debate should focus on what each token represents, who may buy it and where it can trade.

Tenev has said companies should not control tokenized products that neither change their shareholder records nor create new duties for them. His comments followed objections from companies whose names and share prices have been used in stock-linked products without their involvement.

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Knutson said traditional markets already allow third parties to create instruments tied to listed securities. Unsponsored depositary receipts offer one example, making the basic idea of an unaffiliated company issuing a product linked to a public stock familiar to financial markets.

“The debate shouldn’t really be ‘does the issuer get a veto?’ It should be: what exactly does the token represent and who can access it?” Knutson said.

For large public companies with liquid shares, he added, an unsponsored tokenized product may be easier to structure because investors have regular access to financial statements, public filings, and market prices. A token provider can use the listed security as a reference or hold shares to support the product, depending on its legal design.

Even so, identical company names can sit behind instruments with different legal terms. One token may act as a debt security that tracks a stock’s price, while another may represent a beneficial interest in shares held by a custodian. An issuer-sponsored security can place registered equity onchain and retain the rights attached to an ordinary share.

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Robinhood’s products have already placed that distinction under scrutiny. In September, AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron rejected an AMC-linked token because the theater chain had not approved or participated in its creation.

Robinhood describes its transferable Stock Tokens as tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited. Holders receive economic exposure to the referenced stock but do not become shareholders of the company or gain voting rights against it.

Private-company tokens carry added information risks

Knutson drew a sharper line around products linked to private companies, where ordinary token buyers may not receive the financial information available to existing shareholders.

“Unsponsored private equity is a lot more complicated due to potential information asymmetry. The underlying private investors in such scenarios will often have access to financials and reporting not typically allowed to be shared more broadly — while token investors trade only on headlines.”

Private shares lack the continuous disclosure, public filings and regular price discovery associated with exchange-listed companies. According to Knutson, creating a token around such an asset can leave its buyers trading with less information than investors who hold a direct stake in the private company.

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OpenAI raised a similar concern over the nature of Robinhood’s products in July 2025, when the brokerage offered eligible European customers token exposure linked to OpenAI and SpaceX. OpenAI said the tokens were not its equity and that the company had neither partnered with Robinhood nor endorsed the product.

Robinhood said its OpenAI exposure came through a special-purpose vehicle holding an economic interest linked to the private company. Buyers therefore received exposure through Robinhood’s structure rather than shares issued directly by OpenAI.

Knutson’s comments do not treat every third-party product as improper. Instead, his argument separates the question of whether a product may exist from the disclosures investors need to understand its structure, counterparties, and limits.

Transfer controls can restrict where tokens trade

Beyond ownership terms, Knutson said tokenized securities require controls at the protocol level to stop transfers into sanctioned or prohibited markets.

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“Listed companies obviously don’t want tokenized versions of their stocks ending up in sanctioned or prohibited jurisdictions,” he said.

A token can move between compatible blockchain addresses once transfers are enabled, creating a different distribution route from a conventional brokerage account. Compliance may therefore depend on smart-contract restrictions, approved-wallet lists, identity checks and redemption rules applied by the token issuer.

Robinhood currently bars U.S. persons from acquiring the Stock Tokens issued by its Jersey unit. Its documentation says the products have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act and cannot be offered, sold, or delivered in the United States or to American investors.

The restriction means U.S. customers cannot use Robinhood’s blockchain tokens as a substitute for buying the referenced shares through a domestic brokerage account. American investors remain able to purchase ordinary listed stocks under the ownership, custody, and disclosure rules that govern U.S. securities markets.

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A recent Robinhood and AMC dispute also brought the Securities and Exchange Commission into the discussion. Aron said AMC could ask the agency to review the token, although neither an SEC action nor a lawsuit over the product had been announced at the time.

Knutson also identified price discovery as a concern when stock tokens trade on platforms with limited market surveillance. Weak monitoring could matter when a token changes hands outside the hours of the exchange where the referenced stock is listed.

U.S. shares generally stop trading on their primary exchanges at set times, while blockchain markets can operate continuously. Prices on decentralized venues may therefore move when the underlying stock market is closed, particularly during weekends or American holidays when traders cannot immediately arbitrage differences against the listed share.

Tokenized stock models offer different protections

Competition among issuers has produced several structures rather than a single standard for tokenized stocks. Coinbase, for example, introduced products on Base in August that represent beneficial interests in shares held through segregated custody.

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The initial Coinbase offering included tokenized versions of Nvidia, Meta, Apple, and Alphabet. As previously covered in August, Alpaca Securities buys and holds one underlying share for each token at issuance, while a Coinbase-controlled company in the Abu Dhabi Global Market formally issues the securities.

Coinbase’s prospectuses distinguish beneficial ownership from being listed as the legal owner on the public company’s shareholder register. Verified holders may submit voting instructions, although the issuer’s ability to act on them remains subject to legal, operational and timing limits.

Other differences extend to dividends, redemptions, and insolvency claims. Coinbase’s documents say dividends are generally reinvested after fees and applicable U.S. withholding tax, while verified holders may request redemption in shares, dollars or an accepted stablecoin. Robinhood’s tokens place contractual claims against its Jersey issuer rather than against the company whose stock supplies the reference price.

“In the latter case, one of the biggest advantages of tokenization is actually the ability for issuers and investors to interact more directly, with greater transparency over ownership and potentially greater control over how the security operates,” Knutson said about issuer-sponsored products.

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Both sponsored and third-party structures may remain in the market, he added, making the legal design important to an investor’s decision.

“The market is likely to have both models, but investors need to understand which one they’re buying.”

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