Morpho Opens Borrowing Against Coinbase's Tokenized Stocks

Morpho launches borrowing for tokenized stocks on Base

Lending and borrowing against Coinbase's tokenized stocks is now live on Base, according to a post from Morpho on X. Holders of five stock tokens can pledge them as collateral and borrow USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, at either variable or fixed interest rates.

Coinbase began issuing these tokenized stocks in August for users outside the United States. The tokens are held in self-custodial wallets rather than brokerage accounts. Pledging them on Morpho allows a holder to access dollars without selling their position.

Key numbers from the new markets

• Borrowers have pledged $104,401 of stock tokens and drawn $54,652 against them, with $60,265 supplied across five markets, according to Morpho's API data at 9:48 a.m. ET.
• Markets exist for Apple (AAPLc), Alphabet (GOOGLc), Nvidia (NVDAc), Meta Platforms (METAc), and SpaceX (SPCXc).
• The Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and SpaceX markets have a liquidation loan-to-value (LLTV) of 62.5%, while the Alphabet market is set at 77%.
• All five markets were deployed on Sept. 7. Borrowing stayed under $600 until Sept. 16, when it jumped from $503 to $42,105 in about two hours, and has since grown to $54,652.

How the markets are set up

Steakhouse Financial curates all five markets. Its two Steakhouse High Yield USDC vaults supply 98.9% of the dollars in the largest market. The Apple market has $24,805 lent out, with Steakhouse vaults providing $24,540 of that amount.

Morpho said in a reply to its own post that stock-backed markets and their parameters are deployed and set by curators, and the markets are "not available to US persons or persons in other restricted jurisdictions." The restriction comes from the tokens themselves, which Coinbase issues through Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd under Abu Dhabi Global Market prospectuses and offers only outside the U.S.

The market contracts themselves carry no permissioning. The enter gate and liquidator gate on each fixed-rate market are set to the zero address, according to Morpho's API.

Fixed-rate markets remain empty

Morpho's fixed-rate layer, called Midnight, has 95 USDC markets across the five tokens. Maturities run daily through Sept. 30, then at later dates through March 26, 2027, alongside one open-ended market per token. Every one shows zero units outstanding.

All borrowing so far is in the variable-rate markets.

Price feeds and liquidation details

Each market reads a Chainlink price feed through Morpho's Chainlink V2 oracle adapter. For example, the Apple feed printed $335.49 at 1:42 p.m. UTC on Friday, against a DefiLlama price of $337.52 for the token.

A market at 62.5% LLTV liquidates at a 12.67% penalty. No liquidation has been executed in the Apple market since deployment. The largest borrower there holds 113.46 AAPLc against a 20,360 USDC loan, with a health factor of 1.17.

Interest rates and utilization

The Apple, Alphabet, and Nvidia markets sit at 90% utilization, the target in their interest rate model. Borrowers pay 5.62% and lenders earn 5.06%. The Meta market is at 97% utilization, where the curve steepens: borrowers pay 17.52% and lenders earn 16.98%.

Collateral pool and broader context

The five tokens have about $11.4 million outstanding on Base, based on their contract total supply and Morpho's price feeds. The $104,401 pledged on Morpho is under 1% of that total.

Morpho holds $4.03 billion in deposits on Base and $10.42 billion across all chains, according to DefiLlama. Base's stocks page also lists Aave and Euler as places to borrow against the tokens.

MORPHO, the project's token, trades at $2.40, up 11% over 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $1.68 billion, per CoinGecko data.

What is confirmed

Confirmed facts from the source: Morpho has launched lending markets for five Coinbase tokenized stocks on Base. The markets allow holders to borrow USDC against the tokens. Specific numbers for collateral, borrowing, supply, LLTV, and interest rates come from Morpho's API and other cited data sources.

What is still unclear

The source notes that the fixed-rate markets have zero activity, but it does not explain why. It also does not clarify whether the restriction to non-US persons applies to the Morpho markets directly or only through the token's own restrictions.

Why it matters

This development lets holders of Coinbase's tokenized stocks access liquidity without selling their positions. It expands the use cases for tokenized assets on the Base network, though the total value pledged so far is small relative to the overall token supply.

Sources

• The Defiant

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