A Tokenized-Stock Stack Assembles on Base

Happy Friday. This is Converge, The Defiant's weekly recap of tokenization, stablecoins, and real-world assets, by Chris Storaker.

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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Sid Powell on how Maple became crypto's No. 2 lender
The Ninth Circuit splits with the Third on Kalshi
The SEC's Regulation Crypto Assets; Trump's Hyperliquid remark
Ethena's equity-perp plan; bitcoin-backed mortgages; Schwab adds three

TOKENIZATION / EQUITIES

A Tokenized-Stock Stack Assembles on Base

Coinbase's tokenized US equities went live on Base on Monday, with NVDAc, AAPLc, METAc and GOOGLc trading around the clock from self-custodial wallets for eligible users outside the US, no brokerage account required.

Coinbase issues the tokens through an Abu Dhabi SPV, with Alpaca Securities, an SEC-registered broker-dealer, custodying the underlying shares in segregated accounts. Coinbase also runs Base, the chain the tokens settle on, and operates one of the venues where they trade. About 50 apps were live at launch (Aave, Morpho and Euler for lending, Aerodrome for spot liquidity, Wasabi for perps), and Chainlink's total-return feeds run 24/5 while the tokens trade 24/7; Base's documentation tells integrators never to settle or liquidate against a frozen feed.

Bitwise built a managed portfolio on the tokens a day later: a product called Automated Token Portfolios, run with the trading platform Glider, which rebalances holdings through user-authorized session keys while neither firm takes custody. The first strategy, Mag7X, is designed to equal-weight eight megacap names and launches with the four available tokens at 25% each, for a 0.15% fee.
Bitwise built a managed portfolio on the tokens a day later.

No US person can buy any of it; Coinbase asked the SEC for domestic relief in June 2025 and is still waiting.

Our take

Robinhood ran this vertical first; issuing, settling and trading its Stock Tokens on a chain it built for the purpose, with tokens that track shares as debt claims. Coinbase's version lands on Base, a chain already carrying $5.49 billion in TVL and a working DeFi ecosystem, with tokens that are claims on the shares themselves. What to watch: whether the SEC relief request ever lets any of this touch a US wallet.

BANKING / TOKENIZED DEPOSITS

39 State Banking Groups Form BankChain

Thirty-nine US state bankers associations formed BankChain Alliance, an industry-owned network for tokenized deposits, stablecoins, smart payments and automated settlement, targeting a 2027 launch.

The associations represent 3,283 banks holding $21.8 trillion in assets on FDIC call-report data, with the caveat that member banks have not individually committed. The board is chaired by Florida Bankers Association chief executive Kathy Kraninger; the group has finished the first phase of its technology RFP and, per American Banker, wants an ownership stake in whichever partner it selects. Compliance outweighed every other factor in the RFP, Locality Bank co-founder Corey LeBlanc told the publication.

Banks nationwide will be invited to become owners. Community and regional banks get a stake in rails that would otherwise belong to large banks, core-technology vendors or crypto companies ("equal access to a network they own," Utah Bankers Association chief executive Howard Headlee told American Banker).

The Clearing House, owned by 25 of the largest US institutions and clearing more than $2 trillion a day, unveiled its own tokenized-deposit network in June. BankChain is earlier-stage (no technology partner, no committed capital disclosed) and aimed at the thousands of banks The Clearing House does not represent.

Our take

Every tier of US banking now has a tokenized-deposit project: the money-center banks through The Clearing House, Wells Fargo on its own ledger, and now community banks through their state associations. The pattern from Europe's RL1 cooperative holds — banks will share rails with peers before they rent a competitor's. The coordination problem scales with the count, though, and 3,283 banks is the biggest count yet, with association sponsorship still to convert into bank commitments. What to watch: whether the FDIC finalizes its April rule confirming tokenized deposits carry the same insurance as any other.

THIS WEEK'S INTERVIEW

How Maple Became Crypto's No. 2 Lender

Sid Powell, chief executive and co-founder of Maple Finance, joins Chris Storaker on how the onchain credit shop became the second-largest crypto lender behind only Tether — the institutional lending book that kept compounding while tokenized-asset rails took the headlines.

OTHER STORIES WORTH YOUR TIME

Ninth Circuit Says Kalshi's Sports Contracts Aren't Swaps

The Aug. 28 opinion clears Nevada to enforce its gaming laws against Kalshi and splits directly with the Third Circuit, which read the same Commodity Exchange Act text the opposite way in April and left New Jersey blocked. Whether the Super Bowl happens is the occurrence of an event, the panel said; whether a team wins it is the outcome, so the contracts sit outside exclusive CFTC jurisdiction — and Kalshi's self-certification of them was unlawful. Two appeals courts, one product, contradictory answers: the classic condition for Supreme Court review, landing just as Kalshi files for perpetual futures on 12 altcoins and moves onchain with RedStone. Classification decides which rulebook a venue lives under, and the courts just proved the US doesn't have one answer.

SEC Proposes Regulation Crypto Assets, With a $75 Million Exemption

The Aug. 18 proposal lets token issuers raise up to $5 million under a startup exemption or up to $75 million a year under a tiered fundraising exemption, adds a safe harbor that lets a token certify out of being a security once promised work is done (decentralization not required), and preempts state registration. All three sitting commissioners approved it by seriatim vote after cancelling the scheduled open meeting. It follows a decade of enforcement, the January staff statement that format doesn't change the law, the March SEC-CFTC interpretation on when an asset stops being an investment contract, and an innovation exemption shelved in May and again on Aug. 13 — and CLARITY still short of a floor vote, which makes this rulemaking the more advanced track. Comments run 60 days from Federal Register publication.

Trump Says the CFTC Is Working to Onshore Hyperliquid

The president said CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring the geoblocked perps venue into the US "in a fully compliant and legal fashion," at a White House event with Selig in the room. HYPE rose about 19% and Hyperliquid Strategies closed up 30.4%, its largest gain on record, while CME and Cboe fell. There is no public docket, no registration application and no timetable, and the mechanics of applying customer-protection rules to a venue that never takes custody remain unsettled. So far the record holds one sentence.

Ethena Plans Equity-Perp Basis Trades for USDe's Backing

Ethena said Friday it will extend USDe's backing into equity-perpetual basis trades, citing more than $6 billion of open interest across 200 equity-perp contracts and average funding of 15% to 20%, with first partner exchanges "over the next few weeks." It projected RWA perpetuals would exceed crypto allocations in USDe's backing within 12 to 24 months. For a 4.06 billion-token synthetic dollar, the disclosed change is a plan: no venues, allocation size or risk parameters yet.

Coinbase and Better Open Bitcoin-Backed Mortgage Applications

The product pairs a conforming first mortgage with a separate downpayment loan secured by pledged bitcoin valued at 40% of market — $250,000 of bitcoin supports a $100,000 downpayment loan. Price declines alone trigger no margin calls; Better may liquidate only after 60 days of delinquency. Waitlist demand ran to a projected $260 million in loan volume (a figure from prospective borrowers, ahead of any approvals), and eligibility still requires a 680 FICO and Fannie Mae conforming criteria.

Schwab Crypto Will Add SOL, AVAX and LINK

Charles Schwab will take its retail crypto menu to five tokens in the coming months, priced at 75 basis points a trade with Paxos handling sub-custody and execution. The advisor channel — $5.2 trillion in client assets — waits until a targeted mid-2027 rollout.

Even more this week:

Circle set Sept. 16 for Arc's public mainnet — official materials name 11 founding validators while an Arc documentation page describes approximately 20 at launch.
Circle brought native USDC, EURC and CCTP to Plasma — Circle-issued dollar and euro tokens plus a burn-and-mint route for moving USDC across supported chains.
HSBC and Standard Chartered ran the first live transaction on Swift's blockchain ledger — the ledger matched and netted obligations recorded on the banks' separate platforms; final settlement still ran through existing systems.
Vlad Tenev published his case for tokenized stocks in America — five days after the SEC shelved its innovation exemption a second time; Robinhood's Stock Tokens hold $32.2 million of a $2.4 billion market.
RedStone put tokenized RWAs on Stellar above $3 billion — against $213 million of DeFi value it measures on the same chain.
Bitwise's Solana ETF crossed $1 billion first — BSOL took nearly four-fifths of cumulative flows among the six products Farside tracks, with $138 million of Solana ETF inflows over 10 days per Glassnode.
Bullish opened a $100 million facility for USD.AI's GPU-backed loans — USD.AI's API reported $265 million in loan reserves and $491 million in total value locked.
Bitcoin topped $68,000 on Aug. 19 as short liquidations hit $1.7 billion — shorts were 91% of the day's liquidations after the Treasury said it would at least double long-dated bond buybacks.
Bitcoin posted its biggest week since November 2024 as Trump pressed the Senate on CLARITY — up 22.6% over seven days, with the bill back on the floor in September needing roughly six Democratic votes.
Bitcoin then stalled a cent below $80,000 — touching $79,999.99 on Coinbase while 80 of the 123 largest non-stablecoin tokens fell on the day.