Shares of Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, and four other tech giants, tokenized by Coinbase, can now be used as collateral to borrow USDC on the Aave lending protocol. With tokenized stocks, and more broadly with the RWA (Real-World Asset) tokenization, decentralized finance (DeFi) has found a new growth engine while moving closer to traditional finance (TradFi).
September 25, 2026 at 6:24 PM.
3 minutes read
Illustration generated with OpenAI
7 tokenized stocks from Coinbase become eligible collateral on Aave V4
This Friday, September 25, 2026, Aave activated Coinbase tokenized stocks on its V4 version, deployed on Base, the Layer 2 (L2) network launched by Coinbase. Specifically, 7 assets are involved: AAPLc, AMZNc, GOOGLc, METAc, MSFTc, NVDAc, and TSLAc, representing Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla, respectively.
Users deposit these tokenized stocks into a dedicated market, the Equities Hub, and can borrow USDC stablecoins in return. Each stock has its own collateral ratio, which determines the portion of its value that can be borrowed. At launch, these stocks serve strictly as collateral and cannot be borrowed themselves, nor used to borrow other assets.
The offering is restricted to eligible investors located outside of the United States, under Regulation S—a regime overseen by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) that governs offshore securities offerings.
Borrowing against Coinbase Tokenized Stocks is now available on @Aave V4
Access USDC liquidity against eligible tokenized stocks on Base https://t.co/s2HEYDhhRa pic.twitter.com/6vFVUL59f4
— Base (@base) September 25, 2026
Other DeFi protocols were already offering this type of loan, such as Kamino, a leading lending protocol on Solana, which opened a market dedicated to xStocks from Backed Finance and Kraken in July 2025. Then, on July 1, 2026, Robinhood launched its Stock Tokens, which can be deposited as collateral in the lending pools of its own blockchain, the Robinhood Chain.
Real stocks held by a U.S. broker
Each tokenized stock corresponds to a certificate issued by Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd, a company created specifically for these RWA tokenization operations. The underlying shares are held by Alpaca Securities LLC, an SEC-registered broker, in segregated accounts under the issuer's name. The custodian is not permitted to lend them or use them for their own account.
Dividends are automatically reinvested into shares, net of fees and withholding taxes, which increases the amount of equity backing each token. Stock splits follow the same mechanism, thanks to a multiplier initially set to 1.0, which can be adjusted to, for example, 0.5 or 0.1 if shares are split by 2 or 10.
👉 On the same subject – Aave aims to lend stablecoins to institutions via Anchorage and Chainlink
A market open 24/7, but with prices frozen on weekends
The Aave market operates 24/7, except during corporate actions like stock splits, which temporarily suspend the relevant reserve. Chainlink (LINK), the official oracle for Coinbase tasked with transmitting market prices to the blockchain, publishes its quotes from Sunday 8 PM to Friday 8 PM, New York time.
During weekends and U.S. holidays, the last published price remains fixed. Therefore, the value of the collateral does not fluctuate, and the health factor—the indicator measuring the liquidation risk of a loan—can only decrease due to interest accrued on the debt.
Aave plans to add other tokenized stocks from Coinbase and open borrowing for GHO, its native stablecoin, subject to governance approval. Notably, on the same day, Ethena integrated Binance's bStocks, the platform's tokenized shares, into the assets backing its USDe stablecoin. Two announcements confirming the rise of equities in RWA tokenization, a segment that, as of August 2026, already boasted the strongest growth in the RWA market since the beginning of the year.
👉 For more information – All about tokenized stocks
Source: Aave on X, Aave press release