Spout Finance Unlocks $2 Million to Disrupt Stock Lending

• Spout Finance has secured $2 million in funding to develop its interest-free USDC lending initiative for tokenized equities.
• The platform’s margin loans are set at a 50% loan-to-value, can be stretched to multiple years, and users get to retain the ownership and subsequent income accrued on their stock.

• Lender yield is funded by systematic covered call premium written against that collateral rather than by a rate spread charged to the borrower.

• Spout beta is currently running on Solana devnet at beta.spout.finance, and interested users can sign up for access to the upcoming private beta launch.

Spout Finance has raised $2 million in a fundraising campaign to democratize prime brokerage with zero-interest lending against tokenized equities. 

Participants in the round included Draper Dragon, Anchorage Digital, Flow Traders, Taisu Ventures, Vessel Capital, Solayer, 2Square Capital, and Bering Waters Ventures, with strategic backing from Solana Labs.

Why Spot Finance is loaning tokenized equities 

In the current traditional financial system, a share-collateralized loan attracts punitive interest rates. For instance, at Charles Schwab, the base interest rate is 10.25%. Meanwhile, the interest rate for borrowing against your shares in the company, or even those in Fidelity Investments, is 12.075% for a margin under $25,000. Vanguard Group’s rate is higher at 12.25%, while E*TRADE Financial Holdings charges even more at 12.70%. 

On top of that, these rates are tiered such that higher loans attract lower interest rates and smaller debts pay the highest rates. With the Federal Funds Rate placed at just 3.88%, these institutions benefit highly from the huge difference between those figures.

Additional profits for these institutions comes from securities lending programs, which allow brokerages to loan out your shares to other market players. Interactive Brokers retains 50% of the gross revenue generated from this model, while Robinhood retains a massive 85%. 

Historically, private banks have offered friendlier interest rates on securities-backed lending but with certain stringent conditions. Private bank customers have to achieve a relationship minimum of $5 million or more in assets under management (AUM) to enjoy a leaner 4-6% loan interest rate. This feat proves hard for most people to achieve, pushing them outside of the relationship bracket where they accrue even harsher tax interest rates of 12%.

What Spout Finance does differently 

This is where Spout Finance comes in. Contrary to the above institutions, Spout lets users collateralize their digital US equities to borrow USDC at a 50% loan-to-value (LTV). 

Best of all is the 0% interest rates, which applies for as long as the loan exists. The reason behind this incredibly low interest rate is that Spout’s lenders earn from the premiums resulting from the weekly far out-of-the-money (OTM) covered calls made on the collateral. Meanwhile, users enjoy friendly loans and get to keep any income that their shares may generate.

More importantly, Spout enables multi-year loans without interest rates crippling users’ portfolios. Current equities-backed lending is only useful in the short term because over a long time the daily charges become too expensive for long-term debtors to cover. Spout not only serves both kinds of users interest-free, it also enables them to retain ownership of their stakes rather than dispose of them for cash.

As Chris Giancarlo, former Chairman of the CFTC and an angel investor in Spout explained, “Spout lets individuals put up tokenized shares of stock as collateral for margin loans without paying interest. Spout covers its costs in a different way: by selling options contracts tied to the pledged shares, and the fees it collects from selling those options pay for the loan instead of the borrower. That is prime brokerage economics made available to individuals. It is why I have invested in the company and serve as a strategic advisor.”

Samiz Bayan, partner at Draper Dragon, added, “Tokenizing a stock is only the first step. What gives it value is what you can do with it afterward. Spout offers holders the kind of borrowing that used to sit behind private bank minimums, and funds it from the portfolio itself.”

At the moment, Spout is running in beta on Solana devnet at beta.spout.finance. Those interested can sign up for access to the upcoming private beta launch by messaging @0xmryan or @SpoutFi on X.

Notably, capital raised in the latest round will be allocated to expanding the Spout team. Funds will also be channeled towards developing a credit layer that connects issuers, exchanges, and wallets.

Investors and advisers 

Other than the investing entities listed above, Spout is proud to have received the critical backing and strategic support of a stellar group of angel investors including Solana Labs co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal. 

Another is J. Christopher Giancarlo, the 13th Chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and Spout’s regulatory and policy advisor. Giancarlo is also a board member of Nomura, Paxos, and Digital Asset Holdings, the chair of Polymarket’s advisory board, and a senior adviser to Jefferies. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of the Digital Dollar Project.

Additional investors are Eric Chen, the co-founder and CEO of Injective; Dean Swennumson the co-founder and Head of Operations at Superstate (formerly Compound Labs), and Anna Yuan the founder of Perena and former Stablecoin lead at the Solana Foundation. 

Others are Paul Taylor – America’s most active crypto angel investor in 2024 and a former member of BlackRock Private Equity, and also Saiprasad Raut a former Chief Technology Advisor for Crypto at Worldpay (FIS), former co-chair of the Hedera Council’s Technical Steering and Product Committee, and Spout’s product advisor.

More are Shane Qiu the founder and CEO of Bitway, James Parillo a former General Partner at Figment Capital, Stefano Glauser a partner at Polymorphic Capital, Whales Lee a co-founder of CollegeDAO and the former Head of Product at Solayer, Steve Schoonebeek the Business Development Executive at Triton One and Riley Wild the M&A and corporate development at Figment.

A final advisor is Neil Amhis, who is a quantitative strategy advisor with a PhD from UCL, a former quantitative analyst at BNP Paribas and Natixis, and now the Lead Researcher at Zann Capital.