Coinbase Ventures invests in Multipli through Base Ecosystem Fund
What's the deal? Multipli, a Dubai-based protocol that lets users borrow against tokenised real-world assets like gold, stocks, and treasuries, has received a venture investment from Coinbase Ventures through the Base Ecosystem FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The round size was not disclosed.
Multipli manages roughly $300M in assets, making it the largest real-world asset (RWA) protocol on Coinbase's Base blockchain by assets managed. The investment follows a previous $20M round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Spartan GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Sequoia.
Why now? Coinbase has been leaning hard into tokenised stocks and the broader push to move traditional financial assets onchain. CEO Brian Armstrong has called RWA tokenisation one of the major upgrades still needed in finance, pointing to "instant settlement, fractional ownership & massive distribution."
Multipli fits that thesis. It builds the credit and yield infrastructure that turns tokenised assets from passive digital representations into productive collateral — letting holders borrow against them or route them into DeFi liquidity.
"Traditional finance carries a lot of structural overhead," said Bhavesh Praveen, chief technology officer at Multipli. "We believe borrowing against real-world assets can become significantly cheaper than traditional markets and in some cases eventually 10x more efficient."
What could go wrong? Tokenised RWA protocols still face regulatory uncertainty across jurisdictions, and the market remains early-stage. The promise of cheaper onchain credit depends on institutional adoption, which has been slow despite growing interest. If tokenised stocks or bonds face legal pushback, Multipli's collateral base could narrow.
The signal: Coinbase Ventures' backing of a Dubai-based, breakout-stage RWA protocol shows that the exchange's strategic bets are shifting from token listing to owning the credit infrastructure layer beneath tokenised assets. With Pantera Capital and Sequoia — two of crypto's most active investment funds — already on the cap table, institutional conviction around onchain lending against real-world collateral is building faster than adoption itself.
Read more: Business Insider
