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Robinhood CEO says crypto event contracts are outpacing sports wagers on its platform

Robinhood CEO says crypto event contracts are outpacing sports wagers on its platform

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Robinhood Chairman and CEO Vlad Tenev says crypto based event contracts are already taking an outsized share of the company’s prediction markets business, and he expects sports wagers to become the minority category within a few years. The claim lands as sports linked contracts face mounting lawsuits from New York and Baltimore, leaving crypto contracts to grow with far less legal friction.

  • Vlad Tenev told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that crypto event contracts already take a disproportionate share of Robinhood’s prediction markets volume
  • New York sued Kalshi in July seeking more than $36 billion in damages and a nationwide ban on its event contracts
  • Robinhood and market maker Susquehanna formed a joint venture to acquire crypto exchange MIAXdx, formerly known as LedgerX
  • $36B+ in damages New York is seeking from Kalshi over event contracts
  • 9B event contracts traded on Robinhood over the past year
  • Jul when New York filed suit seeking a nationwide Kalshi ban
  • Nov 2025 when the Robinhood-Susquehanna deal for MIAXdx was reported

Speaking on CNBC’s “Mad Money” with Jim Cramer, according to reporting by BeInCrypto, Tenev said crypto contracts are outpacing sports wagers inside Robinhood’s own platform.

Prediction markets have become one of the fastest growing corners of US trading over the past year. CME, Kalshi, Coinbase and decentralized platforms are all competing for a share of the boom.

Crypto linked contracts have expanded alongside them, largely outside the sports betting litigation now working through the courts. That has given Robinhood’s newest product line room to grow quickly while its rivals fight legal battles over sports contracts.

Tenev Tells CNBC Crypto Contracts Are Taking a Disproportionate Share

Tenev pushed back on the idea that event contracts, yes or no trades on the outcome of a future event, are simply a rebrand of sports betting.

We’re already seeing other categories like crypto taking a disproportionate share. And I think within a few years, sports will actually be in the minority.

Vlad Tenev, Chairman and CEO, Robinhood

Sports linked event contracts have become the most contested corner of the prediction markets business. New York sued Kalshi in July seeking more than $36 billion in damages and a nationwide ban on its event contracts. Baltimore separately sued Kalshi and Polymarket over what the city calls unlicensed sportsbooks.

New York City’s council has also opened its own inquiry into how Kalshi, Polymarket, Coinbase and Gemini Titan market prediction contracts to residents. Crypto linked event contracts have so far avoided that scrutiny, leaving the category more room to grow while sports contracts work through the courts.

Susquehanna Deal For MIAXdx Signals Robinhood’s Next Move

Tenev’s comments track moves already underway at Robinhood. The company formed a joint venture with market maker Susquehanna to acquire crypto exchange MIAXdx, formerly LedgerX, according to Front Office Sports, with plans to build dedicated prediction market infrastructure of its own.

Robinhood has called prediction markets its fastest growing revenue line. The company says roughly 9 billion event contracts have traded on its platform over the past year.

Tenev frames the strategy as part of a broader “ownership” push he has also used to justify Robinhood’s retirement account matching program and its expansion into tokenized stocks. The MIAXdx deal gives that push its own regulated exchange rather than relying solely on third party venues.

Whether Crypto Overtakes Sports On Tenev’s Timeline Remains Unverified

Tenev’s forecast that sports contracts fall into the minority within a few years has not been confirmed by any independent data cited in his CNBC appearance. Robinhood has not disclosed a breakdown of how much of its 9 billion event contracts traded over the past year came from crypto versus sports categories.

The legal fights working through the courts in New York and Baltimore involve Kalshi and Polymarket rather than Robinhood directly, but their outcomes will shape how much room sports contracts have to compete going forward. Neither Kalshi nor Polymarket’s response to the lawsuits is represented in this reporting.

The BlockWest read. Robinhood’s push into crypto contracts looks less like a bet on crypto’s popularity and more like a hedge against the legal risk piling up around sports wagering. By building its own exchange through the MIAXdx deal, Robinhood positions itself to route volume away from categories tangled in litigation, giving shareholders exposure to prediction markets without the courtroom exposure that Kalshi and Polymarket currently carry.

Robinhood has not announced a launch date for the prediction market infrastructure it plans to build on MIAXdx, and the New York and Baltimore lawsuits against Kalshi and Polymarket remain unresolved. Investors will be watching whether Robinhood’s crypto contract volume overtakes sports before those cases reach a verdict.

Two Robinhood engineers charged with trading on secret listing data

Two Robinhood engineers charged with trading on secret listing data

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Federal prosecutors have charged two Robinhood software engineers with using confidential listing data to trade cryptocurrency derivatives before the public knew which tokens the brokerage planned to add. The case adds to a growing list of insider-trading actions tied to crypto derivatives platforms, following a similar dispute involving Jane Street Group and the collapse of TerraUSD.

  • Hefu Chai, 36, and Huaisong Xiang, 30, face commodities fraud and wire fraud charges from the Southern District of New York.
  • Prosecutors say each engineer made more than $50,000 trading Hyperliquid perpetual futures tied to unannounced Robinhood Crypto listings.
  • The alleged scheme ran repeatedly between 2025 and 2026, according to the Department of Justice.
  • $50,000+ alleged profit each engineer pocketed per the DOJ complaint
  • 20 years maximum prison term for the wire fraud count
  • 10 years maximum prison term for the commodities fraud count
  • $192M value of UST Jane Street allegedly sold before its 2022 collapse

The Department of Justice unsealed complaints in the Southern District of New York accusing Chai and Xiang of misusing their access to Robinhood’s internal listing plans. According to CryptoPotato, both men worked as engineers at the trading platform and could see which tokens were slated for future listings before those decisions became public.

Engineers Allegedly Bought Hyperliquid Futures Ahead of Robinhood Listings

Prosecutors allege Chai and Xiang used that non-public information to open perpetual futures positions on Hyperliquid tied to tokens Robinhood was preparing to list. They executed the trades before the exchange’s own announcements moved the market, according to the unsealed complaints.

The DOJ says the pattern repeated across 2025 and into 2026, not as an isolated incident. Each defendant is accused of profiting more than $50,000 from the trades.

US Attorney Jamie McDonald Says Derivatives Traders Cannot Evade Insider Rules

The DOJ has filed a criminal complaint charging both men with commodities fraud, which carries a maximum ten-year sentence, and wire fraud, which carries a maximum twenty-year sentence. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald framed the case as a warning to insiders who trade in newer derivative products rather than traditional securities.

Misappropriating confidential information to trade in the derivatives markets for personal benefit is illegal. That is exactly what we allege Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang have done. Today’s charges make clear that corporate insiders cannot evade the securities and commodities laws by trading based on misappropriated information in derivatives like perpetual futures, tokenized securities, or other similar financial instruments.

Jamie McDonald, US Attorney

Chai lives in Menlo Park, California, and Xiang lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Neither Robinhood nor the defendants have offered public comment in the reporting reviewed for this story.

Chai and Xiang Face Separate Court Dates as Jane Street Comparison Resurfaces

Chai is scheduled to appear in federal court in Northern California, while Xiang is set to appear before a federal magistrate judge in New York. Neither a plea nor a trial date has been reported yet.

The charges revive comparisons to Jane Street Group, which New York prosecutors accused earlier this year of using a private Telegram channel to get early insight into Terraform Labs’ handling of the TerraUSD collapse in May 2022. Prosecutors in that case alleged Jane Street sold roughly $192 million worth of UST before the token lost its dollar peg, a sum nearly 4,000 times larger than the profit alleged in the Robinhood case.

The BlockWest read. For exchanges and brokerages, this is a reminder that listing calendars are now market-moving inside information, not internal housekeeping. Firms like Robinhood will likely face pressure to tighten access controls around pre-listing token data the same way equities desks wall off M&A pipelines, and platforms like Hyperliquid may see renewed scrutiny over how easily perpetual futures let insiders convert non-public data into leveraged bets.

Chai’s Northern California court appearance and Xiang’s SDNY magistrate hearing have not yet been dated in the reporting reviewed, leaving open whether either defendant will contest the charges or seek a plea agreement before trial.

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Circle’s Arc goes live with Wall Street running the nodes

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BlockWest
Institutional
ExclusiveBy Ashton AddisonNew York — September 16, 2026

Circle’s Arc goes live with Wall Street running the nodes

Eleven of the largest names in traditional finance are now validating a public blockchain under their own names. The token everyone is watching is the least interesting part of it.

11
Founding validators, including BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard and Visa
10B
ARC tokens minted at genesis, public launch undecided
$3B
Fully diluted valuation from Circle’s private ARC sale
700M+
Transactions on the Arc testnet since October 2025

Circle’s Arc network opened its public mainnet on Wednesday (September 16) with BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard and Visa among its founding validators, eleven months after the testnet went live in October 2025. In that window the test network processed more than 700 million transactions, and Circle arrives at launch with over 100 applications available and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders on board, according to its launch announcement and to The Block, which first reported the details.

The day-one roster reads like a cross-section of the industry Circle wants to move on-chain. Aave V4, Morpho, Uniswap and Aerodrome cover lending and trading. Rain, Thunes and Wirex cover payments. Kraken, MetaMask, Binance Wallet, Ledger and Upbit cover the access layer. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and Circle’s own USYC are live as tradable, collateral-eligible tokenized treasuries.

Under the hood, Arc is an EVM-compatible layer 1 that uses USDC as its native gas currency, so applications never have to hold a volatile token to pay for blockspace. Finality is sub-second. The signature scheme supports post-quantum cryptography, a detail that matters more to a custodian planning a ten-year roadmap than to a trader planning a ten-minute swap.

ValidatorsThe real headline is who is running the nodes

Plenty of chains have promised institutional adoption. Arc is the first to name firms of this size in its validator set at launch, rather than announcing them as partners, investors or pilot participants the way previous institutional chains have. Circle named BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard and Visa as founding validators in August. The full group of eleven also includes Galaxy, Global Payments, MoneyGram, SBI, Standard Chartered and Sumitomo Corporation, alongside Circle itself. One note on the count: The Block reports eleven founding validators, while Bitcoin.com lists twelve names including Circle. We use eleven plus Circle throughout.

BlackRock DTCC ICE Mastercard Visa Standard Chartered SBI Galaxy Global Payments MoneyGram Sumitomo Corporation

They are joining in phases rather than all at once, and for now the network runs on proof of authority, meaning a permissioned set of known operators produces blocks. Circle has said the transition to proof of stake is scheduled for 2027.

The composition tells you who Circle thinks the customer is. DTCC settles almost every US securities trade. ICE owns the New York Stock Exchange. Visa and Mastercard sit on top of the card rails Circle has spent eight years trying to route around. Standard Chartered and SBI bring bank balance sheets and Asian corridors. Having them operate nodes is not just marketing. These firms are willing to be named as part of the security model of a public blockchain, which was unthinkable in the previous cycle.

Two of those names carry an extra layer of intrigue. SBI holds roughly 9 percent of Ripple, runs Japan’s only live XRP remittance corridor and became Asia’s first regulated RLUSD distributor in March, as Bitcoin.com News noted. Mastercard expanded its settlement framework to include RLUSD across eight networks including the XRP Ledger. Both now validate a stablecoin settlement chain that competes directly with the one Ripple is building. Institutions are not picking a winner. They are buying seats at every table.

One caveat on all of this: Circle is the only participant quoted in the launch reporting. None of the eleven validators has set out publicly why it joined, what volume it expects to process, or how it views the network’s direction, and Ripple has not responded to the SBI and Mastercard overlap. Their positions are not in the record yet.

How Arc got here
Oct 2025
Public testnet opens
Aug 2026
First five founding validators named
Sep 16 2026
Mainnet live, 10B ARC minted
2027
Proof of stake; DTCC tokenization in H2

TokenomicsTen billion ARC exist, and Circle isn’t saying when you can buy them

The detail that will get the most trader attention is the token. Circle confirmed it minted the full initial supply of 10 billion ARC this week. In the same breath it said the genesis mint is “a technical milestone, not a commitment to launch them publicly,” and that a public launch remains undecided.

That ambiguity is a deliberate position, not a hedge. ARC is designed as the coordination layer for security, utility and governance, which becomes essential once the network moves to proof of stake in 2027. USDC stays the fee currency throughout, so the token’s role is staking and voting rather than paying for gas.

Share of total ARC supply sold to investors7.4%
740 million of 10 billion ARC. The remaining 92.6 percent sits with Circle and its foundation structures, on no published schedule.
ARC private sale, as disclosed
MetricValue
Capital raised$222M
Tokens sold740M ARC
Price per token$0.30
Fully diluted valuation$3B

BlackRock, a16z and Apollo were among roughly a dozen buyers. For a company whose stock trades on public markets, and whose core product is a dollar that is supposed to be boring, the timing and structure of any ARC distribution will be one of the more scrutinized token events of the cycle.

RetailCrypto Twitter is already treating it as the next Robinhood Chain

Circle built Arc for banks. Crypto Twitter has other plans. Speculators spent the days before launch positioning for a repeat of Robinhood Chain, which opened in July and became the summer’s meme casino. That network hit $3.7 billion in peak monthly DEX volume in August, recorded its first billion-dollar day on August 29 and at one point saw 16,639 meme tokens created in a single day, according to Decrypt.

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If you’ve been active on CT, you’ve probably already seen people calling it the next Robinhood trenches.

— trader quoted by Decrypt, ahead of the Arc launch

Arc’s design does not prevent that. It is a permissionless EVM chain with Uniswap and Aerodrome on day one, and gas in USDC actually makes it cheaper and simpler to spin up tokens than on chains where you first need to acquire a native asset. Whether the opening week is defined by BUIDL collateral flows or by dog coins is not something Circle controls, and it will shape how the institutional validators feel about the brand they have attached their names to.

RoadmapThe 2027 roadmap is where the institutional thesis lands or doesn’t

The launch-day feature set is only part of the pitch. First, DTCC’s partnership is scheduled to enable tokenization of DTC-custodied assets starting in the second half of 2027. If that ships, Arc becomes a venue where assets already sitting inside the US clearing system can move on-chain without leaving regulated custody.

Second, Circle is building confidential transactions with view keys, so counterparties and regulators can see what they are authorized to see while the public cannot. Banks and asset managers have named privacy as the blocker for on-chain settlement for years, and Circle is treating it as a core feature rather than an add-on.

Third, the AI layer. Circle is developing AgentVM, an execution environment for AI agents that handle sensitive data, and a separate payments environment targeting more than 100,000 transactions per second. Arc Studio, an AI coding agent that writes smart contracts and application code, and the Arc App Kits SDK are available now. Jeremy Allaire’s framing of Arc as infrastructure for “the agentic economy” is not a throwaway line. Circle is positioning USDC as the settlement asset for machine-to-machine commerce, with Arc as the chain where that happens.

Layered on top is Circle’s own stack: the Circle Payments Network and StableFX, which support around-the-clock currency trading across USDC, EURC, GBPA, JPYC and KRW1. That is a five-currency FX market running natively on the chain from launch.

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Arc is the single most significant launch in Circle’s history since USDC itself.

— Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO, Circle, in the launch announcement

The BlockWest readWe think the validator set matters more than the token, and the token will get all the attention anyway. Circle convinced the clearing house, the exchange operator and both card networks to run infrastructure on a public chain under their own names. No stablecoin issuer has managed that before. The ARC mint and the meme traders circling the launch are noise around a durable fact. Watch what DTCC does, not what the charts do.

What to watch: the pace at which the eleven founding validators actually come online; any published ARC allocation or vesting schedule; first-week DEX volume on Arc versus Robinhood Chain’s July opening; USDC supply growth on Arc versus Ethereum and Solana; and whether Circle’s next earnings call puts a date on a public ARC launch.

About Circle

Circle Internet Group is the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. The company is publicly traded and operates the Circle Payments Network alongside its new Arc layer 1 blockchain.

BlockWest Institutional / Stablecoins
Robinhood engineers charged with insider trading on crypto futures ahead of token listings.

Robinhood engineers charged with insider trading on crypto futures ahead of token listings.

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Two Robinhood engineers now face federal fraud charges for allegedly using advance knowledge of token listings to trade cryptocurrency futures, marking the first criminal case of its kind against a major brokerage’s staff. The charges underscore how insider trading rules, traditionally enforced in equities markets, are extending into decentralized finance and derivatives.

  • Hefu Chai, 36, and Huaisong Xiang, 30, each face one count of violating the Commodity Exchange Act and one count of wire fraud.
  • The pair allegedly made more than $50,000 each by purchasing futures on tokens before Robinhood announced their listings between 2025 and 2026.
  • Hyperliquid, the decentralized exchange where the trades occurred, faced similar insider trading allegations in December 2025 but denied wrongdoing.
  • $50,000+ Alleged profit per engineer from the purported insider trading scheme
  • $17.1B Market value of HYPE token, which fell 4.5% in 24 hours to $77
  • 2 Prior insider trading allegations against Hyperliquid in December 2025
  • 2025-2026 Period during which the two engineers allegedly made their trades

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged two software engineers employed by Robinhood Crypto with securities fraud on Tuesday (September 16) in what amounts to the first major insider trading case targeting staff at a mainstream brokerage over digital asset trades. According to the Justice Department, Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang allegedly exploited confidential information about forthcoming cryptocurrency token listings to purchase perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives exchange, before Robinhood made those listings public. The story was first reported by BeInCrypto.

How The Engineers Allegedly Used Advance Knowledge Of Token Listings

Perpetual futures on Hyperliquid are leveraged derivative bets on token prices that never expire, allowing traders to hold positions indefinitely without settlement. The prosecutors allege that between 2025 and 2026, Chai and Xiang used their positions at Robinhood Crypto to learn which tokens the firm planned to list, then purchased futures contracts on those same tokens ahead of the announcement.

A listing on a major broker typically drives demand and elevates a token’s price. By buying futures before the listing announcement, the pair would profit from that predictable price movement. Each engineer allegedly made more than $50,000 from the scheme, according to court filings.

Misappropriating confidential information to trade in the derivatives markets for personal benefit is illegal.

Jamie McDonald, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York

Hyperliquid’s Track Record With Insider Trading Allegations

This is not the first time Hyperliquid has faced insider trading accusations.

In December 2025, traders flagged suspicious activity around a wallet that was shorting HYPE, the exchange’s native token, during a token unlock event. Hyperliquid denied that its staff had engaged in insider trading and stated that the wallet in question belonged to a former employee who was dismissed in early 2024. The exchange also said its team members are prohibited from trading HYPE derivatives.

HYPE traded near $77 on Tuesday, down 4.5% over the preceding 24 hours, with a market capitalization of roughly $17.1 billion, placing it 11th by total value.

Robinhood’s Expanding Crypto Ambitions Face Scrutiny

The charges arrive as Robinhood accelerates its cryptocurrency operations through multiple initiatives: launching its own blockchain, expanding perpetual futures trading into European markets, and developing tokenized stock offerings. None of these moves require approval from regulators before proceeding, though they now occur under increased federal attention following the arrest of two of its engineers.

Robinhood has not issued a public statement in response to the charges.

The BlockWest read. The case illustrates how insider trading doctrine, built over decades in equity markets, now extends to decentralized derivatives. For institutions building blockchain infrastructure or crypto trading platforms, compliance teams face a new compliance burden: ensuring that operational knowledge of listings, token launches and partnerships does not leak into the trading desk. Robinhood’s silence suggests the firm may be conducting an internal review before commenting publicly.

The next step lies with the federal court. Both Chai and Xiang face one count of Commodity Exchange Act violations and one count of wire fraud, each carrying potential prison time. Their arraignment and any plea negotiations will determine whether this case sets precedent for how U.S. prosecutors pursue insider trading in decentralized finance.

Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev Responds to AMC Critics Over Stock Token Plans

Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev Responds to AMC Critics Over Stock Token Plans

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Robinhood’s tokenized stock products have triggered a high-profile clash with AMC Entertainment over whether brokerages can issue blockchain-wrapped securities without issuer consent. The dispute tests whether current securities regulations permit such products and could force the SEC to clarify its enforcement boundaries.

  • Robinhood extended tokenized stock offerings to AMC and over 190 other companies without those firms’ direct involvement or approval.
  • AMC CEO Adam Aron called the practice “contemptible, outrageous, disgusting, detestable, inexcusable, vile” and threatened SEC action and outside counsel.
  • Robinhood describes its tokens as debt securities backed one-to-one by collateral shares, granting economic exposure but no voting rights.
  • 190+ Public companies covered by Robinhood’s tokenized stock offering alongside AMC Entertainment
  • 15% Jump in AMC premarket stock price when the public dispute first surfaced

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev publicly defended his company’s tokenized stock products this week, marking his first televised response to AMC Entertainment chief Adam Aron’s fierce objections. Aron has accused Robinhood of issuing unregistered securities tied to AMC stock in violation of federal law, signaling he will pursue legal action and file complaints with the SEC. The clash underscores an unresolved tension in securities regulation: whether a brokerage can wrap any public company’s shares into a tradable blockchain token without that company’s permission or knowledge.

Robinhood Extends Token Coverage to AMC and 190+ Other Companies Without Issuer Consent

Robinhood extended its tokenized stock offering through Robinhood Assets Limited to cover AMC and more than 190 other publicly traded companies, none of which had explicitly agreed to the arrangement. The move allowed the platform to create blockchain-based instruments tied directly to those companies’ shares, creating new trading exposure without any formal relationship between the brokerage and the issuers themselves.

The tokenization trend reflects the broader wave of adoption of blockchain technology across traditional financial infrastructure. Major financial institutions and retail platforms have increasingly explored how distributed ledger technology might streamline settlement, reduce intermediaries, and create new market structures. Robinhood’s approach represents one of the most aggressive implementations of this vision in retail investing.

Aron reacted with forceful criticism, arguing that the tokens fundamentally undermined the proper relationship between a company and its shareholders. He posted on X that the products let Robinhood create exposure to AMC stock with no involvement from the company and no way for AMC to control how its equity was being represented or traded.

I find this practice to be contemptible, outrageous, disgusting, detestable, inexcusable, vile. How can it possibly be legal? We have no connection to this at all, and do not condone it in any way.

Adam Aron, Chief Executive Officer, AMC Entertainment

AMC’s stock surged as much as 15% in premarket trading when the dispute became public, with investors actively trading both the underlying shares and the related token products.

Tenev Argues Companies Cannot Control Every Financial Product Based on Their Stock

On Wednesday, Tenev told CNBC that once a company’s shares begin trading publicly, the issuer cannot dictate every derivative or structured product built atop those securities. He characterized Robinhood’s offerings as debt securities, each backed one-to-one by the underlying shares held in reserve as collateral.

Token holders receive economic exposure to the stock’s price movements but retain no voting rights or ownership stakes in the companies themselves. This structure, Robinhood argues, places the tokens outside the regulatory framework governing direct equity ownership and voting instruments.

Robinhood’s chief legal officer, Dan Gallagher, a former SEC commissioner, also defended the company’s legal interpretation. Gallagher stated publicly that Robinhood understands securities law well and invited AMC to send its lawyers to discuss the matter. His background at the SEC lends weight to the company’s argument that it has vetted the legal foundations of its product offerings.

The Broader Debate Over Financial Innovation and Issuer Rights

Robinhood’s strategy echoes broader tensions in modern finance between financial innovation and traditional corporate governance. Companies have long objected to certain derivative products or structured instruments based on their shares, yet securities law has generally permitted such innovation once shares trade publicly. Tokenization introduces a new dimension to this old conflict.

Public companies increasingly worry about control over how their equity is represented in digital markets. Some have raised concerns that tokenized versions of their shares could complicate cap table management, create confusion among investors, or dilute the official record of shareholding. Others fear that unregistered token products could expose them to regulatory scrutiny if the SEC later challenges the products’ legality.

SEC May Be Forced to Rule on Whether Brokerages Need Issuer Consent for Token Products

The dispute between Robinhood and AMC raises a genuinely unresolved question for U.S. regulators: whether a brokerage can tokenize any public company’s stock without that company’s approval or knowledge. Current securities law does not explicitly address this scenario, leaving both the legality and the enforceability of such products uncertain.

The SEC has been cautious about rushing to regulate crypto and blockchain-based financial products, preferring to issue guidance gradually while monitoring market developments. However, a formal complaint from AMC or similar actions by other major corporations could force the agency to provide clearer rules about token issuance, custody arrangements, and whether issuer consent is legally required.

AMC has threatened to file a complaint with the SEC and bring in outside legal counsel, signaling that this clash could become the first formal regulatory test of where the line sits between a brokerage’s freedom to create new financial products and an issuer’s ability to protect and control how its equity is represented in the market.

Strategy and Robinhood now lead a $4.5 billion large-cap ETF that was not intended for cryptocurrency

Strategy and Robinhood now lead a $4.5 billion large-cap ETF that was not intended for cryptocurrency

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Two companies with significant cryptocurrency ties now dominate a $4.5 billion large-cap ETF that was designed as a generalist equity fund, not a crypto vehicle. The shift highlights how crypto exposure increasingly reaches mainstream investors through indirect channels rather than dedicated digital-asset products.

  • MicroStrategy (MSTR) and Robinhood Markets (HOOD) occupy the top two positions in the Fundstrat Granny Shots US Large Cap ETF (GRNY), representing 6.01% of the portfolio combined.
  • MicroStrategy’s stock gained approximately 21.4% between August 21 and September 3, propelling it above the equal-weight baseline after a fund rebalance.
  • The two companies transmit cryptocurrency exposure through fundamentally different mechanisms: MicroStrategy via a Bitcoin treasury, Robinhood via crypto transaction revenue.
  • $4.5B Assets under management in the Fundstrat Granny Shots large-cap ETF as of September 3.
  • 21.4% MicroStrategy stock price gain from August 21 to September 3, outpacing equal-weight rebalance baseline.
  • 845,050 Bitcoin holdings reported by MicroStrategy as of August 30.
  • $100M Crypto transaction revenue for Robinhood in Q2 out of $1.31 billion total revenue.

The Fundstrat Granny Shots US Large Cap ETF (GRNY) held MicroStrategy as its largest position at 3.02% and Robinhood Markets as its second-largest at 2.99% as of September 4, according to holdings data. The fund, which reported $4.533 billion in assets under management and held 42 securities as of September 3, describes itself as an actively managed US large-cap equity vehicle that owns stocks rather than direct cryptocurrency holdings.

Yet its two dominant positions create meaningful cryptocurrency exposure through separate business models, offering a window into how digital-asset connectivity is reaching mainstream investors through conventional equity channels rather than dedicated crypto products. This dynamic reflects a broader transformation in how cryptocurrency exposure enters traditional investment portfolios, particularly as corporate adoption of digital assets has accelerated over the past several years.

How MicroStrategy and Robinhood Gained the Top Two Slots After Rebalance

The fund conducted an equal-weight rebalance on August 21, resetting all 42 holdings to approximately equal weight, or roughly 2.38% per position. MicroStrategy and Robinhood were already in the portfolio and remained after the reset.

MicroStrategy’s rise to the largest position appears tied directly to sharp stock appreciation. The stock closed at $119.25 on August 21 and reached $144.82 by September 3, a gain of approximately 21.4% over that period. This rally likely accounts for most of MicroStrategy’s climb above the equal-weight baseline, though the exact attribution among purchases, fund creations, redemptions, and price appreciation remains unclear from public data.

The August 21 rebalance also added Freeport-McMoRan, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Micron Technology, SiriusPoint and Vertiv to the portfolio, while removing Air Products and Chemicals, American Express, Broadcom, Meta Platforms, Northrop Grumman, PNC Financial Services and Texas Pacific Land. These changes reflected the fund manager’s effort to maintain equal weighting across the core holdings.

Two Distinct Cryptocurrency Risk Mechanisms at Work

MicroStrategy and Robinhood transmit cryptocurrency risk through fundamentally different pathways and should not be treated as interchangeable proxies for crypto exposure. MicroStrategy reported holding 845,050 Bitcoin as of August 30, making changes in Bitcoin’s value central to the company’s balance sheet and equity valuation.

MicroStrategy, originally a business intelligence software company, has transformed itself into a Bitcoin holding company under the leadership of founder Michael Saylor, who has positioned the company’s balance sheet as a corporate proxy for Bitcoin investment. The company’s stock price also reflects leverage, financing terms, security issuance, its software business, and the premium or discount investors assign to its treasury strategy. This approach has attracted both Bitcoin advocates and volatility-seeking traders, but it also introduces company-specific operational and financial risks beyond pure Bitcoin price exposure.

Robinhood’s crypto connection operates on an entirely different basis. The company reported $100 million in crypto transaction revenue during the second quarter out of total revenue of $1.31 billion. Cryptocurrency represents one revenue stream within a diversified business that also includes equities trading, options trading, interest income and customer assets.

As a retail brokerage platform, Robinhood benefits from increased trading activity during periods of elevated crypto market volatility and adoption. However, crypto-market activity can affect trading volumes and revenue, but movements in Bitcoin prices do not directly impact Robinhood’s balance sheet the way they do for MicroStrategy. Robinhood’s exposure is indirect and dependent on user behavior and market participation patterns rather than direct asset holdings.

The combined 6.01% position does not therefore equate to a 6.01% direct Bitcoin allocation. It represents exposure to two distinct businesses whose sensitivity to crypto prices arises through different channels and arrives bundled with company-specific operational and financial risks. This distinction matters significantly for investors seeking to understand their actual cryptocurrency exposure through equity fund holdings.

Incidental Crypto Exposure Through a Generalist Fund Structure

GRNY remains a single data point rather than evidence of a broader industry-wide migration. The fund has not changed its stated mandate as a generalist large-cap equity vehicle, and its exposure to crypto-linked companies is disclosed through standard holdings transparency. Establishing a wider shift toward crypto-sensitive stocks as proxy exposure would require comparable holdings and flow data across multiple active equity funds tracked over time.

The rise of corporate Bitcoin treasuries and cryptocurrency-integrated business models has created an interesting challenge for traditional fund managers. Companies like MicroStrategy, Tesla, and others holding significant Bitcoin reserves were not specifically designed to be crypto vehicles, yet they increasingly serve that function for many market participants. This blurring of traditional equity and crypto exposure categories reflects the maturation and mainstreaming of Bitcoin as an asset class.

A direct spot-Bitcoin product such as BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF operates structurally differently, seeking to reflect the price of Bitcoin and holding Bitcoin itself as its portfolio asset. These products offer simplicity and direct correlation with cryptocurrency prices, making them appropriate for investors with explicit crypto allocation mandates. GRNY shareholders, by contrast, hold operating-company stocks selected by an active manager whose net asset value transmits some combination of Bitcoin price movements, crypto-trading activity and equity-specific valuation changes.

Investors absorbing this exposure through GRNY do so without necessarily purchasing a dedicated spot-Bitcoin fund, and they may not have intended cryptocurrency exposure at all. This dynamic raises questions about transparency and investor awareness regarding indirect crypto exposure embedded within traditional equity products.

The case of GRNY demonstrates how cryptocurrency has become embedded within traditional equity markets through corporate treasuries and payment platforms, creating unintended or incidental exposure for investors who may not explicitly seek it. Whether this trend extends across the broader active fund universe, or whether MicroStrategy’s sharp August rally proved temporary, remains an open question for portfolio trackers and crypto observers monitoring the flow of digital-asset exposure into conventional equity allocations.

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