đBest ways to use RWAs on-chain
valuable weekly insights
Altura is a multi-strategy yield protocol offering a 19.8% base APY in addition to future airdrop rewards. Explore its yield opportunities here!
GM friends.
Hereâs what Iâll cover today:
đBest ways to use RWAs on-chain
đ Crypto chart of the week
đď¸ The latest DeFi news
đ Best ways to use RWAs on-chain
Tokenization has undoubtedly been one of the fastest-growing crypto sectors.
Just to put things into perspective, two years ago, the total market cap of real-world assets (RWAs) was $2.2 billion. Today, it is over $29 billion.
And I donât think that tokenization growth will slow down anytime soon.
Despite being a nascent sector, RWAs are already unlocking a lot of possibilities that the average person doesnât have access to in the traditional financial system.
Here are the most interesting things you can do with RWAs on-chain todayđ
Borrow stablecoins against your stocks/ETFs
Letâs say you wanna buy a car and donât have cash, but you have a stock portfolio.
If youâre an EU citizen, you generally canât borrow money against your stocks because of the current regulations, unless youâre a high net worth individual.
So, unless you choose to take a personal loan at a high interest rate, youâre basically forced to sell your stocks to buy that car.
DeFi solves this.
You can buy tokenized stocks and borrow against them on-chain.
There are two popular money markets where you can unlock instant liquidity against your tokenized stock/ETF holdings (only a few collaterals are supported for now):
Borrow AUSD against SPYx (a tokenized S&P 500 asset issued by xStocks that can be bought on DEXs and CEXs) on Morpho
Whatâs really interesting is that youâre currently GETTING PAID to borrow AUSD against SPY on Morpho, as the borrowing rate in this market is negative (-6.09%).
This is because of a e current incentive program, and it wonât last forever, but itâs an extremely attractive opportunity for those who hold tokenized S&P 500 shares.
You could, for example, borrow stablecoins against SPYx, get paid to borrow, and deploy these stablecoins in DeFi to earn an even higher yield.
Borrow stablecoins against SPYx, TSLA, QQQx, NVDAx, MSTRx, AAPLx, and many other tokenized stocks/ETFs issued by xStocks on Kamino (Solana)
xStocks is a tokenization platform acquired by Kraken and is currently the fastest-growing issuer of tokenized stocks. It also has a points program, so the holders of its tokenized assets will probably be rewarded in the future.
Trade traditional financial assets 24/7
If youâve been active on CT, you already know that Hyperliquidâs HIP-3 markets for trading RWAs 24/7 have become extremely successful.
The reason why is simple:
A lot of big announcements (especially from the Trump administration) tend to drop on weekends or after market hours, when traditional financial markets are closed.
For example, the Iran war started on a Saturday. When this happened, traders wanted to long oil and short stocks, but the stock market was closed until Monday.
So they went to Hyperliquid, where they could trade these assets 24/7.
And this is how Hyperliquid became the premier venue for 24/7 price discovery on oil, metals, and indices when traditional markets are closed.
I expect 24/7 RWA perps to become increasingly popular over the next few months and even flip crypto assets in volume at some point.
Access institutional-grade yield strategies
This is probably the most exciting thing that tokenization enables.
For the first time, sophisticated strategies, previously reserved mainly for hedge funds and very wealthy people, are being made available to everyone with a wallet.
Basis trading, RWA looping, institutional lending, and GPU financing are just a few of the RWA strategies that retail investors couldnât use before DeFi appeared:
Ethenaâs sUSDe - generates yield via basis trading / T-bills exposure
Skyâs sUSDs - generates yield via dozens of off-chain and on-chain strategies
Theoâs thUSD - generates yield via a delta-neutral gold strategy
Alturaâs AVLT - generates yield via funding rate arbitrage, market making, and a gold arbitrage strategy
RAACâs iREET - generates yield by buying and renting real estate properties
Mapleâs syrupUSDC - generates yield via overcollateralized loans to institutions
Now you can simply buy a yield-bearing asset to get exposure to all these strategies.
For those of us who have been in crypto for at least a few years, yield-bearing assets may seem like nothing new. But yield-bearing assets actually enable a level of capital efficiency that you canât get in traditional finance.
Thereâs a reason why US banks are trying to ban stablecoin yield: they realize that yield-bearing stables offer returns that bank deposits canât compete with.
Price-wise, the past months have been difficult, but if you look at how many use cases RWAs enable, itâs hard to believe that more money wonât eventually flow on-chain.
I remain confident that DeFi will make a comeback.
Together with Altura
The stablecoin yield vault built for all market conditions
Most TVL deposited in DeFi today gets less than 5% APY.
This is because, as we entered a bear market, most crypto-native yield sources and token incentive programs have dried up.
This is where Altura comes in.
Altura is a multi-strategy stablecoin yield vault that uses real-world assets, funding-rate arbitrage, and market-making strategies to generate competitive returns.
Here is what makes it stand out:
Alturaâs base APY is currently 19.8% for holding AVLT, its yield-bearing asset
The protocol has an Accountable transparency dashboard where you can see where its reserves are deployed and AVLT collateralization ratio
Altura has recently surpassed $14M in TVL in 3 months after its launch
Where is the 19.8% APY coming from?
Most of it comes from Alturaâs physical gold arbitrage strategy.
Via an asset manager called Inessa Holdings, Altura buys gold from institutional sellers, which is then verified and documented to be tokenized, transported to a refinery buyer via logistics providers, and sold to generate an arbitrage profit.
In addition to the base 19.8% APY yield that AVLT holders receive, they are also eligible for ALTU airdrop rewards that will become claimable at TGE.
Start exploring Alturaâs yield opportunities today!
Chart of the week
Odds of MegaETH releasing a token in April skyrocketed
Crypto meme of the weekđ
The latest developments in DeFi
Morpho announced Morpho Midnight - a new fixed rate lending protocol
Aaveâs âAave Will Winâ proposal to distribute all its revenue to Aave DAO passed
GMX rolled its first-ever 24/7 RWA perps for Gold and Silver
Hyperliquid launched priority fees for faster trade execution
Monad distributed a new airdrop to its most active users
Polygon launched sPOL - its liquid staking POL token with yield from priority fees
BRIX, a project on MegaETH, announced it will launch a Turkish Lira stablecoin offering ~45% APY backed by money market funds
Tether, the USDT issuer, launched its own self-custodial consumer wallet
EtherFi migrated from Scroll to OP Mainnet
Lido DAO approved launching a $20M LDO buyback program
xStocks went live on Mantle enabling 24/7 tokenized equity trading
WorldLibertyFi proposed locking the WLFI tokens of its public sale investors for another 4 yearsđ
Kevin Warsh, the next FED Chair, disclosed that he invested in over 30 crypto projects, including Solana, Polymarket, and Lighter
Polymarket token preview page was created on Coingecko
SEC clarified that DeFi front-ends can operate without broker-dealer registration
Aerodrome announced plans to launch Aero, a new cross-chain DEX, in July
Thatâs all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
Want to sponsor this newsletter?
Please send me a DM on Twitter (X). I have a sponsorship deck that I can send you.