Coinbase and Morpho bring gold-backed loans to millions of users
TL;DR: Morpho now powers gold-backed loans in Coinbase Borrow. Gold (PAXG) becomes its first non-crypto collateral asset, joining BTC, ETH, XRP and SOL through a new Morpho Blue market on Base, the same integration already powering roughly $3.4B in collateral and $1.7B+ in active loans. This integration shows how Morpho enables Coinbase to bring new financing options to their users without rebuilding the infrastructure or bootstrapping liquidity from scratch, and how onchain credit can create demand for tokenized assets.
Gold-backed loans on crypto-backed loans infrastructure
Coinbase users can now borrow stablecoins against tokenized gold issued by Paxos without leaving the Coinbase app.
Coinbase Borrow already lets users borrow against a range of crypto-native assets: BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL and more. To date the integration holds roughly $3.4B of collateral on Morpho, with $1.7B+ in active loans, one of the largest crypto-backed loans integrations between a consumer platform and an open credit network.
With tokenized gold, Coinbase extends on this proven infrastructure by adding a new USDC|PAXG market on Morpho on Base, without rebuilding infrastructure from scratch or bootstrapping a new lending market.
Morpho is one of the largest sources of USDC liquidity onchain, giving Coinbase users access to competitive USDC borrowing rates against gold.
Tokenization is only the first step
Gold is a roughly $30 trillion asset class, and only about $5 billion of it is tokenized onchain. An even smaller fraction of that is used as a productive asset onchain as collateral in onchain lending today. As with tokenized stocks backed loans, gold-backed loans is still a developing market for onchain credit.
We have long held the belief that tokenization is only the first step for asset issuers. When tokenized assets can be used as collateral to unlock stablecoin liquidity and become an integral part of onchain finance, they are truly differentiated from their offchain counterparts and become more in demand.
Gold is the first non-crypto asset in Coinbase Borrow. The same path is open to any tokenized asset and platforms building on Morpho.
