A tokenised Apple share posted on Aave will now borrow up to 78% of its value in USDC.
Microsoft goes to 79%, Alphabet 76%, Amazon 73%, Nvidia 70%, and Meta and Tesla 65%.
None of it is available to anyone in the United States.
What Went Live
Aave’s Equities Hub opened on 25 September, running on Aave V4 on Base. Eligible users deposit Coinbase-issued tokenised stocks and borrow USDC against them, with Chainlink supplying the price feeds.
Seven stocks are listed: Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. The structure is deliberately narrow. The stock tokens are collateral only, so nobody can borrow them, and USDC is the single borrowable asset.
AAVE has risen sharply since, gaining double digits on Tuesday to trade near $166 against roughly $147 four days earlier.
The Thing That Actually Changed
Aave founder Stani Kulechov put it in one line. “Until now a tokenized stock was something you could hold or trade. Today it becomes something you can borrow against.”
That is a larger step than it sounds. Tokenised equities have existed for over a year and have mostly been a way to hold exposure on a chain. Lending against them puts the blockchain inside the transaction rather than beside it, and it happens without a margin desk, a credit check or market hours.
Compare it with the institutional versions announced this month. Nasdaq’s SEC-approved tokenisation mints the token after a trade has already settled conventionally. Goldman Sachs connected a Treasury fund to crypto settlement rails using its non-tokenised share class. Cboe mentioned tokenised options once, in a clause. This is the first of the recent batch where the chain does the work.
Where the Shares Actually Sit
The plumbing is worth following. Coinbase issues the tokens through an Abu Dhabi entity. Alpaca Securities acts as broker and custodian for the underlying public shares. Coinbase describes the tokens as beneficial interests backed by those shares rather than as tracking products.
The tokens are not registered under the US Securities Act and are offered only to eligible non-US users under Regulation S.
So a US-listed share, held by a US broker, wrapped by a US exchange through a Gulf subsidiary, becomes borrowable against everywhere except the country it is listed in.
A Second Hub Is Already Proposed
On 28 September, TokenLogic submitted a proposal for a Monad V4 hub built for tokenised equity lending, with a $15 million incentive allocation from the Monad Foundation.
It would split collateral into three risk tiers, Core Assets, Growth Assets and Emerging Listings, sharing USDC and USDT0 liquidity across them, and would extend beyond single stocks to tokenised S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 exposure, Treasury bills and emerging-market ETFs.
It sits at the discussion stage and needs an ARFC Snapshot vote and then a full proposal before anything activates. Separately, Kulechov has said the protocol is weighing token burns alongside its existing buyback, which runs a $50 million annual budget at between $250,000 and $1.75 million a week.
