Aave accepts Coinbase tokenised US stocks as collateral for dollar loans on Base

Shawn Jhanji

Sep 28

5 min read

Updated: Oct 7

Aave, the onchain lending protocol, opened a market on 25 September 2026 that lets holders of seven tokenised United States stocks issued by Coinbase borrow the dollar stablecoin USDC against them. The market runs on Base, a blockchain built by Coinbase, and launched with tokens tracking Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.

Lending against a share depends on a valuation and on who holds the underlying stock.

The numbers are the story. Each token is accepted at a collateral factor of between 65 and 79 per cent depending on the stock, meaning a borrower posting 100 dollars of tokenised Apple can draw at most 79 dollars of stablecoin, and less for the more volatile names. The risk firm LlamaRisk set an opening ceiling of about 29 million dollars of collateral capacity, a 32 million dollar cap on USDC supplied to the market and a 21 million dollar cap on total borrowing. Borrowing runs one way only: the tokenised stocks can be pledged but not borrowed, and a borrower cannot yet use one stock token to support a position in another.

Stani Kulechov, founder and chief executive of Aave Labs, put the change in one line: "Until now a tokenized stock was something you could hold or trade. Today it becomes something you can borrow against."

The chain behind the collateral

Pledging a token only works if someone can be made to hand over the share behind it. The tokens are issued by Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd, and the underlying shares are held by Alpaca Securities LLC in segregated custody accounts, so the claim runs back to a broker-dealer's books rather than to code. That is what allows a lender to treat the token as secured rather than synthetic, and it is also the point at which the arrangement depends on conventional securities law rather than on the blockchain.

The timetable exposes the second limit. Prices come from Chainlink feeds that operate from 20:00 Eastern time on Sunday to 20:00 Eastern on Friday, pausing at weekends and on United States market holidays, with the last recorded price held until trading resumes. A lending market that never closes is therefore valuing its collateral against a price that does, for roughly two days a week. Loans taken out on a Friday evening are marked against Friday's close until Sunday night, whatever happens to the company in between.

Aave said more Coinbase tokenised stocks are expected to be added over time, along with its own GHO stablecoin as a borrowable asset. Access is limited to eligible users outside the United States in permitted jurisdictions, and neither Aave nor Coinbase has published the list of those jurisdictions.

Impact for UK

None of this is available to a UK company wanting to make its own shares usable as security, and no British founder gains a financing route from it. The value is as a price signal. Whether a tokenised share can be used as collateral has been the open question behind most of the institutional work of the past two years, and until this week the answers were either theoretical or confined to closed systems. A public market has now quoted a discount.

The UK is taking the other path to the same place. ClearToken won Bank of England approval on 22 September 2026 to run a digital securities depository settling tokenised FTSE 350 equities and sterling government debt, with those instruments usable as collateral and intraday repurchase agreements supported. That is the same function inside a supervised depository, with institutional participants and a regulator that can see the book. Neither the FCA nor the Bank of England has said whether tokenised equity may be pledged in open lending markets of the kind Aave operates, and the question has not been put to them.

Key takeaways

Aave opened a market on 25 September 2026 accepting seven Coinbase-issued tokenised US stocks as collateral for USDC loans on Base.
Collateral factors run from 65 to 79 per cent by stock, with an opening collateral ceiling of about 29 million dollars and a 21 million dollar borrowing cap set by LlamaRisk.
The shares behind the tokens sit in segregated custody at Alpaca Securities LLC, so the collateral claim depends on a broker-dealer's records.
Chainlink price feeds pause at weekends and on US market holidays, leaving an always-open lending market marked against a stale price for part of each week.
In the UK the same function is being built inside the Bank of England sandbox through ClearToken, and regulators have not addressed open lending markets.

Frequently asked questions

Which Coinbase tokenised stocks can be used as collateral on Aave?

Aave opened a market on Base on 25 September 2026 that lets holders of seven Coinbase-issued tokenised US stocks borrow USDC against them. The market launched with tokens tracking Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, and Aave said more are expected over time.

How much USDC can be borrowed against tokenised stocks on Aave?

Each token has a collateral factor of between 65 and 79 per cent depending on the stock, so 100 dollars of tokenised Apple supports at most 79 dollars of USDC. LlamaRisk set opening limits of about 29 million dollars of collateral capacity, 32 million dollars of USDC supply and 21 million dollars of total borrowing.

Who holds the real shares behind Coinbase tokenised stocks?

The tokens are issued by Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd, and the underlying shares are held by Alpaca Securities LLC in segregated custody accounts. The collateral claim therefore depends on a broker-dealer's records and conventional securities law rather than on the blockchain.

How are tokenised stocks priced on Aave at weekends?

Prices come from Chainlink feeds that run from 20:00 Eastern time on Sunday to 20:00 Eastern on Friday and pause at weekends and on US market holidays. The last recorded price is held until trading resumes, so loans are marked against Friday's close until Sunday night.

Can UK companies use tokenised shares as collateral in the same way?

Not through the Aave market, which gives UK companies no financing route for their own shares. In the UK, ClearToken won Bank of England approval on 22 September 2026 to run a digital securities depository where tokenised FTSE 350 equities and sterling government debt can be used as collateral. Neither the FCA nor the Bank of England has said whether tokenised equity may be pledged in open lending markets.

This is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice.