A new window opened on Sept. 25: pledge \"tokens\" of seven U.S. stocks such as Apple, Nvidia and Tesla, and you can borrow a dollar coin against them. A stock token is a coin tied 1:1 to a real share held in custody, so it can be traded on a blockchain. Aave, a DeFi lending service where programs on a blockchain lend money instead of a bank (more than $1 trillion in loans to date), began accepting these tokens, issued by U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, as collateral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A stock-backed loan, where you pledge shares instead of selling them and borrow against them, is usually something a brokerage sells. Now a crypto service that never closes, not even on weekends, is doing the same job. But you are not pledging the Nvidia in your brokerage account; you pledge Coinbase's Nvidia token. And the cap is about $29 million across the seven stocks, a small experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But size is not the point. Behind \"don't sell, pledge\" hides a time gap: the loans run 24 hours a day, while the price of the stocks behind them moves only five days a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Aug. 24, Coinbase launched U.S. stock tokens on Base, its own blockchain. The real shares behind the tokens are held by Alpaca, a U.S. brokerage. Only users in permitted regions outside the U.S. can use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Sept. 25, Aave opened a lending window just for stocks on Base. Pledge tokens of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google's parent), Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia or Tesla, and you can borrow USDC, a coin issued by Circle and pegged 1:1 to the dollar. USDC is the only thing it lends, and the window is open 24 hours a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aave founder Stani Kulechov said: \"Until now a tokenized stock was something you could hold or trade. Today it becomes something you can borrow against.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How much of the pledged value you can borrow depends on the stock. According to crypto.news, the ratios Aave published are 79% for Microsoft, 78% for Apple, 76% for Alphabet, 73% for Amazon, 70% for Nvidia and 65% for Meta and Tesla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That means pledging $10,000 worth of Nvidia tokens lets you borrow up to $7,000 (BITPRESS calculation). The overall limits are small: about $29 million of stock tokens across the seven names can be accepted as collateral, and up to $21 million of USDC can be lent out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crypto loans backed by stock tokens are not new. Kamino, a lending service on the Solana blockchain, has let users pledge stock tokens (xStocks) and borrow stablecoins since July 2025. What is different now is that Aave, with more than $1 trillion in loans to date, has taken the same path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stock token market is growing too. According to RWA.xyz, a data site that tracks tokenized assets, stock tokens in circulation on blockchains were worth $3.2 billion as of Sept. 25, held in about 3.9 million wallets. One person can use several wallets, so that is not the same as the number of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A similar move came the same day. Ethena, which runs the dollar-linked coin USDe, began on Sept. 25 to hold stock tokens from crypto exchange Binance as assets backing USDe. It buys the stock tokens and, in futures on the same stocks, bets on the side that gains when prices fall, so the price swings cancel out. Ethena's risk committee noted, however, that until a separate agreement protecting the shares is in place, the tokens carry a risk closer to unsecured credit to a Binance affiliate than a claim on the stock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stock tokens that people used to just hold are starting to serve as loan collateral and as backing for coins. Stock tokens are becoming raw material for making money in the crypto market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real shares behind the tokens do not trade on weekends. The stock prices from Chainlink, the service Aave uses to bring outside prices onto the blockchain, update only from 8 p.m. Sunday to 8 p.m. Friday U.S. Eastern Time. Over weekends and U.S. market holidays, they stay frozen at the last price. Sunday 8 p.m. is when overnight trading in U.S. stocks opens, and Friday 8 p.m. is when after-hours trading ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aave said: \"Users can still borrow, repay or withdraw in those windows, though collateral values won't reflect off-market news until pricing resumes.\" LlamaRisk explained that news released while the market is closed may show up as a single price change when publication resumes, leaving borrowers less room to absorb a sharp move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the collateral no longer covers the debt well enough, a forced liquidation happens. In Aave v4 the borrowing-limit ratio is itself that line, so with Nvidia a position becomes eligible for liquidation the moment the debt exceeds 70% of the collateral value (based on the formula in Aave's official docs). Another participant repays the debt and takes that amount, plus a bonus, out of the pledged stock tokens. The borrower loses more stock tokens than the debt was worth. It works like a margin call sale at a brokerage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Holding a stock token does not automatically make you a shareholder. The tokens are issued by a separate entity called Coinbase Onchain SPV, and the real shares are held by Alpaca Securities. Dividends, voting rights and the right to swap tokens for real shares depend on the terms in the offering documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dividends are not paid in cash; after fees and taxes, they automatically buy more shares. Only approved institutions can create new tokens or turn them back into real shares. That means individuals cannot turn the shares in their brokerage accounts into tokens themselves and pledge them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Don't sell, pledge\" means keeping your Nvidia and taking on a debt on top of it. If the price rises, the gain is yours, but if it falls, the debt does not shrink. If the collateral stops covering the debt, stock tokens worth the debt plus a bonus are handed over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When weekend bad news gets priced in is fixed. Collateral prices freeze at 8 p.m. Friday U.S. Eastern Time and move again at 9 a.m. Monday Korea time (during U.S. daylight saving time, BITPRESS calculation). Two days of news land at that moment all at once, and those who borrowed up to the limit hit the liquidation line first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scale is still small. The $29 million collateral cap is about 0.9% of the $3.2 billion in stock tokens in circulation (BITPRESS calculation). Still, crypto services have put the same product on a 24-hour counter, going after the stock-backed loan customers brokerages used to serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What opened 24 hours a day is the loan counter, not the collateral price. Stocks you pledged instead of selling keep backing your debt over the weekend, but what they are worth is decided only on Monday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sources Glossary<\/strong> BITPRESS articles are information to help your investment decisions, not a recommendation to buy or sell any stock or coin. Investment decisions and their results are your own responsibility.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \uc5d4\ube44\ub514\uc544 \ud1a0\ud070 1\ub9cc \ub2ec\ub7ec\uc5b4\uce58\ub97c \ub9e1\uae30\uba74 \ub2ec\ub7ec \ucf54\uc778 7,000\ub2ec\ub7ec\ub97c \ube4c\ub824\uc8fc\ub294 \ucc3d\uad6c\uac00 9\uc6d4 25\uc77c \ucf54\uc778 \ub300\ucd9c \uc11c\ube44\uc2a4 \uc5d0\uc774\ube0c\uc5d0 \uc5f4\ub838\ub2e4. \uadf8\ub7f0\ub370 \ub300\ucd9c\uc740 24\uc2dc\uac04 \ub3cc\uc544\uac00\uace0 \ub2f4\ubcf4\uc778 \uc8fc\uc2dd \uac00\uaca9\uc740 \uc8fc\ub9d0\uc5d0 \uba48\ucdb0, \uc8fc\ub9d0 \uc545\uc7ac\ub294 \uc6d4\uc694\uc77c \uc544\uce68 \ud55c\uaebc\ubc88\uc5d0 \uccad\uc0b0\uc73c\ub85c \ub3cc\uc544\uc62c \uc218 \uc788\ub2e4.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"bitpress_en_title":"","bitpress_en_desc":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[408,276,203,260,905,907,477,906,246,775],"class_list":["post-2500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crypto","tag-usdc","tag-276","tag-203","tag-260","tag-905","tag-907","tag-477","tag-906","tag-246","tag-775"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
https:\/\/www.theblock.co\/news\/defi\/2026-09-25-aave-v4-on-base-adds-coinbase-tokenized-stocks-as-collateral-for-usdc-loans-416372<\/a>
https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/news\/defi\/aave-adds-coinbase-stock-tokens-as-collateral-on-base<\/a>
https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/markets\/crypto\/articles\/coinbase-tokenized-stocks-added-collateral-160100514.html<\/a>
https:\/\/crypto.news\/aave-v4-coinbase-tokenized-stocks-aave-price-response\/<\/a>
https:\/\/coinlaw.io\/coinbase-tokenized-stocks-aave-v4-base\/<\/a>
https:\/\/en.cryptonomist.ch\/2026\/09\/25\/coinbase-tokenized-stocks-collateral\/<\/a>
https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/exchanges\/coinbase-tokenized-stocks-go-live-for-eligible-non-us-users\/<\/a>
https:\/\/www.cryptotimes.io\/2026\/08\/24\/coinbase-launches-tokenized-shares-on-base-for-non-u-s-users\/<\/a>
https:\/\/aave.com\/help\/borrowing\/liquidations<\/a>
https:\/\/cryptonews.net\/news\/defi\/33496994\/<\/a>
https:\/\/app.rwa.xyz\/stocks<\/a>
https:\/\/unchainedcrypto.com\/ethena-starts-backing-usde-with-tokenized-stocks-on-binance-its-first-equity-basis-venue\/<\/a>
https:\/\/www.cryptotimes.io\/2026\/09\/25\/ethena-begins-equity-basis-trade-on-binance-with-tokenized-stocks\/<\/a>
https:\/\/yellow.com\/research\/decentralized-lending-2026-aave-on-chain-money-markets<\/a>
https:\/\/www.daishin.com\/g.ds?p=728&v=458<\/a>
https:\/\/www.theblock.co\/post\/362284\/solana-based-decentralized-lending-protocol-kamino-integrates-tokenized-xstocks-as-collateral-option<\/a>
https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/news\/defi\/kamino-becomes-first-major-defi-lender-to-accept-tokenized-stocks-as-collateral<\/a>
https:\/\/www.cryptopolitan.com\/tokenized-stockholders-hit-4-3-million-43x\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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DeFi (decentralized finance)<\/strong> \u2014 Financial services where programs on a blockchain, rather than a middleman such as a bank, lend and borrow money by preset rules.
Stock token (tokenized stock)<\/strong> \u2014 A coin tied 1:1 to a real share held in custody so it can be traded on a blockchain; its rights are not the same as the share itself.
USDC<\/strong> \u2014 A dollar-linked coin (stablecoin) issued by U.S. company Circle and designed to stay worth $1.
Forced liquidation<\/strong> \u2014 When pledged collateral no longer covers the loan well enough, it is automatically handed over and used to repay the debt, much like a margin call sale at a brokerage.
Stock-backed loans<\/strong> \u2014 A loan where you pledge shares you own instead of selling them and borrow part of their value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n