Investors borrowing against tokenized real-world assets through decentralized finance (DeFi) can face changing financing costs during redemption delays, while fixed-term loans could give institutions more certainty, CoinDesk reported.
The timing can leave borrowers paying a changing rate while they wait to exit an asset. CoinDesk said some tokenized-credit redemptions take from T+1 to well beyond T+90. In many leveraged real-world asset strategies, borrowing rates move with the share of a lending pool that is in use.
On Aave, CoinDesk’s example puts the USD Coin (USDC) borrowing rate at 4% when pool utilization is 92%, rising to 14% when the pool is fully used. The report said Aave’s USDC pool was at 100% utilization for five days during the April 2026 KelpDAO rsETH exploit, leaving borrowers exposed to the maximum rate.
CoinDesk put stablecoin supply at about $300 billion and aggregate vault assets near $20 billion. CoinDesk put Morpho’s deposits above $16 billion, with most held in pools whose borrowing rates change with utilization. Rates that move with pool demand can suit traders who adjust liquid positions quickly, but make long-term borrowing costs harder to predict.
Some lending venues are offering terms linked to particular assets. CoinDesk reported that Morpho Midnight offered markets with set rates and maturities, which Coinbase used for crypto-backed customer loans it introduced in September 2026. The report also named Tenor Finance, Kamino, Term Labs and Loopscale as markets quoting rates for specific products. A Kamino market priced loans against Figure’s auto loan portfolio at a fixed 5.3% on rolling 30-day terms, according to CoinDesk.
CoinDesk argued that matching a loan’s duration to its collateral could help institutions assess strategies that borrow and reinvest repeatedly. For one hypothetical, the report allocates 5% of Sky and Ethena’s $12 billion in reserve capital, or $600 million, to equity. At three times leverage, that could generate $1.8 billion in real-world asset demand.
CoinDesk said the Oct. 10, 2025, liquidation cascade totaled $19 billion; DeFi’s total value locked then fell by nearly 60% in the ensuing eight months. The report identified issuers of underwritten assets with returns uncorrelated with crypto as potential beneficiaries, provided those assets support repeated borrowing and reinvestment. Borrowers waiting for redemptions bear the exposure to rate spikes.
