A stock token has a beginning and an end. It begins when it is minted and ends when it is burned. In between it can pass through any number of wallets and pools without either event happening again. A trader new to stock tokens can get a long way by keeping those two events separate from ordinary trading.
Minting
To mint is to create. The contract adds new tokens to a wallet’s balance and raises its total supply by the same amount. Before the mint those tokens did not exist. For an issued token like a stock token, creating tokens is the issuer’s act. Robinhood issues these tokens, so a mint is Robinhood putting more of a given token on the chain.
Redeeming and burning
Redeeming runs the other way. Tokens are handed back and the contract burns them, which removes them from the ledger and lowers total supply. After the burn they are gone. They have not moved to another wallet.
Robinhood publishes a mint and burn volume for each token for the current day. So both events are visible from outside, as a daily figure and as a change in the contract’s supply.
What the terms decide
The events are simple. The rules around them are not public facts a trader can read off a chart. Who may request a mint, who may redeem, what is delivered on redemption, how long it takes and what it costs are all set by the issuer’s own terms. This article does not describe them. Anyone who needs those answers should read the terms themselves.
Trading is neither
Buying a stock token from another holder is not a mint. The tokens already existed and supply does not change. The same is true of a trade against an on-chain pool. The pool gives up tokens it already held and takes payment in return, at a price set by its reserves, as how an AMM prices a token explains.
So demand for a token can show up in two places from the outside. It can show up as price pressure, in the quote or in a pool. Or it can show up as a rise in supply, when more tokens are created. The two leave different marks, and a careful reader checks both.
What a mint does not prove
A mint says more tokens exist than before. It does not say a buyer was bullish. Tokens can be created for many reasons, and the chain records the event without the motive. A burn is the same in reverse. Fewer tokens exist, and the reason is not written down.
A day of zero mints and zero burns is also a real reading. Supply did not change over the weekend of 3 to 4 October 2026 on any of them. Flat is a measurement. It should not be mistaken for a gap in the data.
Where to see it
The Stocks On-Chain tab of the Crypto Market Map shows Robinhood’s mint and burn figure for today beside each token’s shares on-chain and its flow. The longer read of that flow is in shares on-chain: what mint and redeem flow tells you.