Written by: Boaz Sobrado

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

“These ‘OpenAI tokens’ are not OpenAI equity.” On July 1, 2025, the OpenAI newsroom account publicly posted a clear separation, stating, “We are not collaborating with Robinhood, are not involved in this matter, and do not endorse it.”

This warning was not unexpected. The day before, Robinhood had officially launched over 200 tokenized U.S. stocks for European users on the stage in Cannes and had even distributed free “stock tokens” linked to two of the most sought-after private companies—SpaceX and OpenAI. The problem is that neither company had signed any agreement. Within 48 hours, OpenAI reminded fans to "be careful." A week later, Lithuania's central bank, the main regulatory authority for Robinhood in Europe, also indicated that it was waiting for clarification on how these tokens were constructed.

The real issue lies in the structure. Holding Robinhood’s SpaceX tokens does not equate to owning SpaceX stock. What you actually possess is a debt claim on a special purpose vehicle (SPV) fund, while this vehicle holds preferred shares of SpaceX. OpenAI tokens are even more outrageous; they relate to convertible notes, which are not stock at all. In either case, the buyer ultimately receives only a number that will fluctuate with the company's valuation, and besides that, there is almost nothing—no voting rights, no name on the shareholder register, and no real ownership.

The people behind these products are actually quite candid about it.

Your name will not appear on the shareholder register

Chan Ahn is someone who specializes in creating these types of tokens. He is the founder and CEO of Tessera. On the *On The Margin* podcast, he candidly stated, “The private market is the real place where wealth effects exist. But it has always been open only to the top 0.1% through cumbersome paperwork, high minimum investment thresholds, and geographical restrictions.” His company sells tokens for private companies like SpaceX and the prediction market Kalshi. Buying one, he said, “There’s no KYC process, and that’s intentional, not negligence.”

But he also bluntly admits what the tokens are not: “You are not a true private stockholder, so you do not have voting rights. Your name will not appear on the shareholder register, and so on. But you do gain economic exposure to the underlying company, and that is what matters.”

In other words, what you buy is price exposure, not ownership.

Contractual debt, not ownership

Chris Turner, co-founder of Kula, makes this distinction clearer: “What it actually does is reference that asset, or gives you contractual exposure to the economic upside of that specific asset. But you do not own the asset. Only the asset owners own the asset.”

He further distinguishes between two models. One is the presently common “contractual debt” model in the market; the other is true “ownership tokenization”—“You own a token, and the token itself is the asset, so you own the asset. This is different.” Turner acknowledges that true ownership tokenization “has actually started happening,” but what most ordinary investors are currently exposed to remains the former—a contractual right that follows the price.

The regulatory stance is almost entirely unanimous. Natasha Cazenave, executive director of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), warned in September 2025 that tokenized instruments “often do not confer shareholder rights,” which leads to a “specific risk of investor misunderstanding.” Hester Peirce, a commissioner leading the U.S. SEC's crypto task force, stated more directly in a July 2025 statement, “Tokenized securities are still securities.” She added that blockchain “does not have a magical ability to change the nature of the underlying asset.”

In a word: on-chain does not turn debt into equity.

Issuer-led betting

Some believe that the real solution is to have different people do this.

Edwin Mata is the CEO and co-founder of Brickken. This Barcelona company was founded by him in 2020, after he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer. He advocates that instead of having brokers or third parties package other people’s shares into offshore vehicles, companies should create their own tools on-chain and within their jurisdiction as regulated securities.

Mata likens Brickken to Shopify in the financial sector: “We are a tokenization-as-a-service company that allows any business to instantly digitize financial instruments without code and without dealing with any technical details.” Companies can use it to tokenize equity, debt, bonds, commodities, gold, real estate, and everything can be done within their jurisdiction.

The company claims to have tokenized over $660 million in assets across 40 countries (this is self-reported and unaudited). Mata emphasizes that tokenization is not a new invention, but an upgrade of securitization. “Tokenization comes from securitization; it’s essentially an upgrade of what was originally there.”

The scenarios he is most optimistic about are actually very practical—such as short-term receivables, invoices, and factoring debt instruments. “Because they are highly liquid and of substantial volume.” This is very far from the scene of freely distributing SpaceX tokens, yet much closer to the “infrastructure-level” applications that regulators hope to see.

Embedded in the entire economy

Whether Brickken can become a winner, the entire market is moving in this direction.

BlackRock's tokenized money market fund BUIDL went live in March 2024, marking the first time that large institutions took this seriously. Robinhood's own blockchain, built on Arbitrum technology, also officially went live on the mainnet on July 1, 2026. According to data from RWA.xyz, excluding stablecoins, the transferable value of on-chain real-world assets has grown from about $8 billion in 2024 to between $26 billion and $32 billion now.

Bruno Caratori, co-founder and COO of crypto index management company Hashdex, points out that the real barrier is often not technology, but understanding: “People find it difficult to invest in things they do not understand. They need to be able to explain to themselves why this specific asset or asset class would appreciate over time.”

Mata looks even further. He anticipates a “proxy capital market”—AI can automatically help issuers create tokenized products based on market value and demand. He says, “It will no longer just be a niche field for blockchain but will be embedded in the entire economy.”

But all these discussions revolve around one core question: Does tokenized equity bring about ownership, or is it merely a price?

On this point, builders and regulators have rarely reached a consensus. As Chris Turner said, once the token itself is the asset and not a debt claim on the asset, “you own the asset. This is different.”

The vast majority of the so-called “tokenized stocks” currently in the market still belong to the latter.

Buyers need to think clearly: what exactly are they buying.