Borrowing Against Your Tesla Stock to Buy a Car Is the Future of DeFi: Robert Leshner

In brief

• Superstate CEO Robert Leshner believes tokenizing cars, houses, and especially stocks will drive mainstream adoption of blockchain technology
• Tokenization converts real-world assets into digital tokens on the blockchain, enabling faster transactions and programmable smart contracts
• Successful tokenized Treasury funds like BlackRock’s BUIDL ($2.3B) demonstrate growing institutional interest in on-chain traditional assets

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It’s going to take some cars and houses to get users really keen on tokenization, Superstate founder and CEO Robert Leshner told Decrypt.

Leshner noted that tokenizing those large physical assets would widen awareness, although applying the process to stocks would supercharge adoption.

“When you start to say, like you own the stock, you can self-custody the stock, you can bring it to a DeFi protocol and you can borrow against it. And you can take that money and buy a car or buy a house and leave the system entirely with it—I think there’s going to be a lot of really happy investors,” he said.

Tokenization refers to taking real-world assets, like U.S. treasuries, stocks, or gold, and turning them into a digital token that’s on the blockchain. The asset itself doesn’t change, but turning it into a token helps it move faster and makes it programmable by way of smart contracts.

Successful tokenized Treasuries include BlackRock’s iShares BUIDL fund, which has amassed $2.3 billion; Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund, which manages $846 million; and Ondo’s OUSG and USDY products, which manage a combined $1.4 billion.

Leshner first splashed into the crypto industry in 2017 when he founded Compound Labs, one of the earliest Ethereum DeFi lending protocols. He’s since become CEO and co-founder of Superstate, a firm focused on building the infrastructure that moves more traditional financial assets on chain through tokenization.

For example, the company recently helped tokenize the shares of Nasdaq-traded Solana Company and Galaxy Digital on its Opening Bell platform.

“Frankly, the ability to use financing in new ways is incredibly appealing,” he said. “And not being told the only thing you can do is buy more stocks at your broker dealer, right?”

The other use case he highlighted as exciting, but still “underexplored,” is portability. Although there are already systems in place to help an investor move shares between different firms, they’re not great, he said.

“If I want to just move a share to you because it’s your birthday and I want to put a share in your account, it’s actually really hard,” Leshner said. “There’s weird solutions that have been built over the years, like stock gift cards, but stock is not really portable.”