Key facts
- Arch Lending plans to offer loans backed by tokenized equities.
- Arch co-founder Himanshu Sahay stated the lender aims to enter the market soon.
- Tokenized equities issued by firms including Superstate, Robinhood and Securitize were cited.
- Arch Lending has recently launched loans backed by Paxos Gold and Tether Gold.
- Bitcoin accounts for over 80% of Arch Lending's existing loan book.
- The distributed tokenized stock value has climbed to about $3.15 billion from $630 million a year ago.
Crypto lender Arch Lending intends to expand its services to include loans backed by tokenized equities, as the market for onchain stocks gains momentum. Himanshu Sahay, Arch's co-founder and chief revenue officer, indicated on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction podcast that the company plans to enter this market "pretty soon." He highlighted a growing demand for credit against tokenized stocks, noting that while the market has expanded significantly over the past year, lending options remain limited.
Sahay pointed to tokenized equities from companies like Superstate, Robinhood, and Securitize as examples of assets that will likely drive this market expansion, predicting increased participation from lenders. Arch Lending has already diversified beyond traditional cryptocurrencies, recently introducing loans secured by Paxos Gold and Tether Gold. However, Bitcoin still constitutes over 80% of Arch's current loan portfolio, with growing interest observed in XRP as collateral, particularly from US-based borrowers.
Arch Lending is not the first to explore this space. Ondo Finance launched DeFi lending markets for its tokenized ETFs, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ, in February. Additionally, Kraken now supports futures and margin positions backed by 10 xStocks, and Coinbase's B20 stocks were launched on Base in August with infrastructure for DeFi borrowing and lending. The value of distributed tokenized stocks has surged to approximately $3.15 billion from $630 million a year ago, according to RWA.xyz data.