Arch Lending plans loans backed by tokenized equities

Arch Lending plans to expand into loans backed by tokenized equities. Himanshu Sahay said the lender plans to enter the market "pretty soon." Sahay said tokenized equities have grown rapidly over the past year. Sahay said lending against the assets remains limited. Sahay pointed to tokenized equities issued by Superstate, Robinhood and Securitize. Sahay predicted that multiple lenders will eventually provide credit against the assets. Arch recently launched loans backed by Paxos Gold and Tether Gold, according to Sahay. Bitcoin accounts for more than 80% of Arch's existing loan book, Sahay said. Sahay said Arch has recently seen growing interest in XRP as collateral among US borrowers. In February, Ondo Finance launched DeFi lending markets for two tokenized ETFs through an integration with Morpho. Ondo's tokenized versions of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ can be used as collateral for borrowing on Ethereum. Kraken made 10 xStocks eligible to back futures and margin positions in July. Coinbase's B20 stocks launched on Base in August with price-feed infrastructure designed to support uses including DeFi borrowing and lending. Distributed tokenized stock value has climbed to about $3.15 billion from roughly $630 million a year ago, according to RWA.xyz data.