Spout Finance – Let Your Stocks Pay the Interest

Spout starts from an argument about who tokenized stocks are really for. Marc points out that anyone with meaningful capital, almost anywhere in the world, can already open an Interactive Brokers account and buy US equities, so putting shares on a blockchain is not much of a breakthrough by itself. The more interesting question is what onchain stocks can do that brokerage stocks can’t. His answer is a lending pool that works like Aave or Kamino, with one structural difference. Instead of charging borrowers interest, Spout sells covered calls on their collateral every week, set well above the current price, and uses the premiums to pay lenders. Borrowers can take out up to half the value of their tokenized shares in USDC. The cost shows up as a small cap on their upside, which Marc estimates averages under half a percent a year, compared with margin rates of roughly 4.5% at the cheap end and 20% or more at some emerging-market brokers. Lenders, meanwhile, earn premium income that doesn’t depend on whether the stock goes up or down.

The conversation also covers how a small startup positions itself in a sector that is now attracting major institutions. Marc says most of the investors in Spout’s recent $2 million round were chosen for what they bring beyond money. Anchorage Digital provides the institutional custody that large funds require, Solana is the chain he considers best suited for bringing retail onto financial assets, and former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo advises on navigating US regulation. Marc also explains why Spout gave up issuing its own tokenized shares. Running issuance alongside a lending protocol created too much legal and corporate overhead, so the team chose to be a permissionless layer that works with every issuer instead of competing with them. Most of those issuers wrap shares held with a custodian such as Alpaca. Marc contrasts that with native issuance from firms like Securitize and Superstate, where the shares themselves live onchain and can be self-custodied.

That distinction frames his view of the current regulatory fight. After a batch of companies objected to having their shares tokenized on OKXICE, the joint venture between OKX and NYSE owner ICE, under the SEC’s new Innovation Exemption, Marc argues that wrappers will keep serving offshore investors. US access, in his view, will come through native issuance or closer work with the DTCC. He is candid that a Spout token is undecided. If one launches, it would boost lender rates and allow options to be sold further out of the money. In the hot take round, Marc places himself between Bitcoin maximalism and multi-chain opportunism. He says every public equity will eventually move onchain, describes how AI agents now run parts of his own business, and names Back to the Future as his favorite film.

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