Artem Tolkachev oversees the protocol’s real-world asset and fiat collateral strategy. He has been actively involved in the tokenisation field for nearly ten years, advising companies and regulators on digital asset infrastructure and developing some of the earliest on-chain financing and RWA models in Europe.
We recently spoke with Artem Tolkachev, Chief RWA Officer at Falcon Finance, about how tokenised stocks are changing investor behaviour and the protocols’ strategy for integrating real-world assets into DeFi.
Falcon Finance enables users to use tokenised stocks (xStocks) as collateral to mint stablecoins, unlocking liquidity without selling their underlying equity holdings. By treating equities as primary collateral alongside crypto assets, Falcon aims to develop a unified, capital-efficient balance sheet for investors.
Read more about Falcon’s approach to risk management, custody, and the future of on-chain assets in the interview below.
Falcon positions tokenised stocks as a way to unlock liquidity without selling. How do you see this mechanism changing investor behaviour as more blue chips and RWAs come on-chain?
The major behavioural shift is that “hold versus sell” ceases to be a simple binary choice. With xStocks, a Tesla or Nvidia position can remain fully intact while the investor mints USDf against it and allocates that liquidity elsewhere.
So instead of selling assets to raise cash, people can hold and earn. Your equity becomes the anchor, and USDf acts as working capital around it. It also encourages investors toward a “one balance sheet” mindset: crypto, equities, treasuries, and other RWAs sit in a single programmable portfolio rather than being confined to separate silos.
For institutions, that simply equates to higher capital efficiency. Assets that previously sat idle in custody or brokerage accounts can now support treasury, yield, or hedging strategies without exiting the original exposure. Over time, the default becomes: retain the asset you trust, and let it work for you on-chain.
Tokenised stocks and synthetics differ in custody, backing, and regulatory treatment. How do you explain these differences to institutions that are familiar with traditional synthetics but are new to their on-chain counterparts?
We begin with what they already understand: CFDs and total-return swaps. The straightforward explanation is that synthetics are contracts where you assume pure counterparty risk. xStocks are fully backed certificates, held 1:1 with regulated custodians within a bankruptcy-remote SPV.
So instead of holding a claim on a broker’s balance sheet, you hold a tokenised tracker that is directly backed by real equities in segregated accounts. From a rights perspective, it is closer to a structured note: you get economic and price exposure, but not voting rights. The real upgrade is on the infrastructure side. xStocks trade 24/7, can reside in institutional custody wallets, and connect directly to Falcon as collateral.
We present them as fully collateralised equity trackers on programmable rails, not “DeFi CFDs.” That has a very different risk profile and makes for a much better starting point for institutions.
Falcon integrated tokenised stocks directly into its collateral engine. What gaps in DeFi did you identify that justified including equities as primary collateral rather than considering them a niche RWA category?
Because most RWAs were not really doing anything, tokenised treasuries and credit sat in isolated vaults with no true composability. They did not communicate with the rest of DeFi.
Our view is simple: RWAs only matter when they serve as composable collateral. If an asset can’t unlock liquidity or integrate into on-chain strategy stacks, it’s merely a static wrapper. DeFi collateral, however, has been too focused on crypto. If you want a universal collateral engine, treasuries, credit, gold, and equities must sit alongside BTC and ETH, not in a separate RWA side pocket.
So Falcon brings xStocks into the same composable collateral engine as blue-chip crypto, keeps them collateral-only, and cleanly separates RWA risk from the USDf yield engine. It creates a cleaner, safer, more modular cross-asset system instead of isolated, non-composable vaults.
You use overcollateralisation ratios to manage risk across crypto, gold, and equities. What risk parameters drive your OCR settings for tokenised stocks compared with more volatile assets?
We use the same framework across all collateral types, just with different inputs. For tokenised stocks, we look at four things.
First, volatility and drawdowns. Large-cap equities are less volatile than altcoins but can still gap on news or earnings, placing them in a mid-range category.
Second is liquidity for both the underlying stock and the tokenised wrapper, focusing on volumes, depth, and the speed at which positions can be unwound.
Third, we examine the mismatch between the oracle and trading hours. Equities trade five days a week, while DeFi operates continuously, 24/7. We need to understand what happens during gaps and around market openings.
Lastly, we consider correlation and concentration, examining single-name risk, sector clustering, and the extent to which the book is tied to a single theme.
Today, that results in equities maintaining approximately a 20% buffer. This is more conservative than treasuries but less volatile than high-volatility crypto. The main point is that it employs a single risk framework across crypto, gold, treasuries, and equities, rather than a separate RWA regime tacked on.
xStocks are fully backed and held with regulated custodians. How does Falcon verify the integrity of custody and make sure the bankruptcy-remote structure truly protects users in a worst-case scenario?
xStocks employs a robust protection model in which the underlying shares are held 1:1 in segregated accounts with regulated custodians. These assets never appear on the issuer’s balance sheet.
A neutral Swiss Security Agent is a party to a tripartite control agreement with the issuer and custodians. The Agent has complete oversight of the custody accounts and can lawfully assume control of the assets if the rights of token holders are not maintained. This serves as the legal enforcement layer Falcon depends on, an independent entity dedicated solely to safeguarding investors.
Moreover, Backed has integrated Chainlink Proof of Reserves. An audit firm monitors the actual custodial balances and updates attestations every 10 minutes, which Chainlink oracles publish on-chain. Falcon can independently verify at any moment that circulating xStocks never exceed the real shares held in custody.
The structure is entirely bankruptcy-remote. Each xStock is issued through an SPV, and token holders have a first-priority claim on the underlying shares, as outlined in the EU-approved prospectus. Our confidence stems from two levels: regulated segregated custody plus an independent Security Agent, and continuous, verifiable on-chain proof-of-reserves. Together, these provide Falcon with a high-trust collateral asset even in extreme scenarios.
Falcon lets users mint USDf against tokenised stocks, hold equity exposure, and deploy liquidity elsewhere. Which yield strategies do you see becoming core drivers of this “hold and earn” behaviour?
First is the base layer. Users mint USDf against their tokenised stocks and stake it into sUSDf. This grants them access to Falcon’s delta-neutral yield engine without exposing their equity. For many, this is the simplest and most intuitive route: keep the asset you trust, earn on the dollars you unlock.
Second is composability. Once users hold USDf, they can move it freely across DeFi into lending markets, LP positions, hedges, or structured strategies. The key is that they retain full exposure to Tesla, Nvidia, or an S&P basket, while USDf becomes their working capital.
Third is structured access. We expect more vaults and automated strategies to emerge that utilise USDf or even xStocks directly and encapsulate more complex positions into one-click products. This makes “hold and earn” accessible even to those who do not wish to manage positions manually. Across all three categories, the pattern remains the same: equity serves as the anchor asset, and USDf provides programmable liquidity around it. This is the behavioural shift we are already observing today.
How does Falcon evaluate market readiness before adding a new equity class as supported collateral?
When we consider adding a new equity class as collateral, we run it through a straightforward three-step filter.
First, the quality of the market and infrastructure. We need to observe sufficient liquidity in both the underlying equity and its tokenised wrapper. This includes real volumes, narrow spreads, transparent pricing, and dependable oracle feeds. If the market cannot support a swift unwind under stress, it is not suitable collateral.
Secondly, legal and custody clarity. We examine how the tokenised asset is issued, including the SPV structure, segregation model, the underlying custodian, and the public documentation. If the legal framework isn’t transparent and the custody infrastructure isn’t institution-grade, we won’t proceed with onboarding.
Third, risk and actual demand. We assess price behaviour, sector concentration, correlations, gap risk, and whether users genuinely want to mint USDf against that asset.
Falcon is not a museum of tokenised assets; we add collateral only if people will use it significantly. If all three boxes are checked (liquidity, legal clarity, and real demand), we proceed with onboarding. If even one of them seems weak, we would rather wait. That is how we maintain a robust collateral engine while expanding the supported asset universe.
What milestones do you expect the industry to hit by 2030, and how does Falcon prepare for an environment where traditional assets and on-chain assets converge?
By 2030, I expect most major liquid assets (treasuries, credit, equities, gold, index products) to be on-chain as programmable collateral, not because “crypto wins”, but because the infrastructure is simply better. It offers real-time settlement, transparent custody, global access, and the ability to connect assets directly into automated strategies.
The next wave of investment will likely stem from short-duration treasuries, investment-grade credit, and large-cap equities or ETF-style trackers. These instruments already dominate traditional portfolios, and once they are integrated into clean tokenised railways, transitioning them into DeFi becomes a matter of efficiency rather than ideology.
Falcon is preparing for that world by building a cross-asset collateral engine instead of a crypto-only one. We maintain three separate pillars: collateral risk, strategy risk, and user returns. This guarantees that any well-structured tokenised asset can integrate into the system without creating noise or contagion.
In the future, a user will not think in terms of DeFi versus TradFi. They will simply look at their portfolio (BTC, treasuries, credit, equities) and ask one question: “How much USDf liquidity can this unlock?” Falcon’s job is to provide an instant, precise answer and route that liquidity safely across the on-chain economy.