A crypto trader saw an unrealized gain of over $2 million in less than 12 hours by capitalizing on the controversy surrounding Robinhood Markets (Nasdaq: HOOD) and AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE: AMC).
Here is what happened.
Related: Jim Cramer issues bullish call on Robinhood after Morgan Stanley upgrade
Robinhood-AMC feud births a meme coin
As reported earlier, the two companies recently got involved in a major controversy.
Robinhood is an e-brokerage platform that offers equity, crypto, and stock tokens. A tokenized stock or a stock token is a digital token created on a blockchain that tracks the price of a publicly listed company’s stock. It is only a synthetic version of a stock, with no official relation to the company publicly listed on a stock exchange.
Related: What are tokenized stocks? Explained
On Sep. 3, AMC CEO Adam Aron criticized Robinhood for offering a tokenized version of the AMC stock without registering under U.S. securities laws and threatened legal action if it didn’t stop trading the AMC stock token.
Robinhood didn’t back down, as its chief legal officer, Dan Gallagher, said the firm is aware of the U.S. securities laws and won’t stop offering the AMC token, daring Aron to send his lawyers.
The controversy birthed a meme coin called “A Meme Coin (AMC)” the same day.
A meme coin is a cryptocurrency inspired by internet memes, viral trends, or pop culture. Unlike Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH), meme coins usually have no real-world utility. Their value relies entirely on online hype, social media buzz, and community excitement.
A Meme Coin’s acronym, AMC, pokes fun at the entertainment giant’s viral feud with Robinhood. The coin rallied from $0.00008571 to $0.1509 within a few hours, a surge of approximately 176,000%.
Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:
Crypto trader sees over $2 million paper gain on MEME rally
As per the onchain analytics platform Lookonchain, a crypto trader bought 6.11 million MEME for $2,972 when the meme coin was just launched.
As MEME rallied, the trader sold 750,000 coins for $85,300. But they are still holding 15.36 million MEME with an unrealized gain of $2.03 million, Lookonchain said on Sep. 4 at 3:20 AM ET.
The meme coin has since crashed and was trading at $0.03136 at the time of writing.
Related: Man becomes overnight millionaire after finding Bitcoin lost for 12 years
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Sep 5, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
