Tokenet Goes Live: EquiLend-Backed Crypto Lending Platform Targets Institutional Gap

Institutional digital asset lending got its first dedicated, securities-finance-grade venue on May 14, when Digital Prime Technologies switched on live trading at Tokenet, with Galaxy Digital (Nasdaq: GLXY) executing among the inaugural transactions and EquiLend supplying the distribution network. The launch arrives as the institutional crypto lending market rebuilds toward its 2021 highs, and it directly targets the operational gap that finance desks have flagged since the 2022 collapses of Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager and Genesis.

What is Tokenet and why does it matter now?

Tokenet is a multi-custodian lending platform that ports the workflow stack of traditional securities finance, rerates, recalls, returns, mark-to-market, collateral management, into digital assets. Firms post borrow needs and lend availability through a single enterprise system rather than the bilateral chat-and-spreadsheet workflows that have dominated crypto lending desks. Through the partnership, Tokenet will route into EquiLend's global securities-finance client base, which already connects most major prime brokers, agent lenders and beneficial owners on the traditional side.

The timing is deliberate. Galaxy Research's April 2025 State of Crypto Lending report put the combined CeFi and DeFi lending market at $36.5 billion at the end of Q4 2024, with subsequent industry tracking placing it at roughly $53 billion by Q2 2025, still below the $64.4 billion 2021 peak but recovering fast. CeFi remains heavily concentrated: Tether, Galaxy and Ledn together hold close to 90% of the $11.2 billion CeFi loan book, leaving the rest of the institutional market underserved by platform infrastructure.

How does Tokenet differ from existing crypto lending venues?

The structural pitch is operational, not product. Pre-2022 crypto lending was built around bilateral credit relationships, opaque collateral management and balance-sheet warehousing by lenders themselves, the model that failed when token prices fell and asset-liability mismatches surfaced. Tokenet's multi-custodian model means collateral does not sit on the platform's books, and lifecycle events are systematised rather than handled by chat. That is the same separation of execution, custody and risk that underpins regulated securities finance, and the absence of it was the through-line in every major lender failure of the last cycle.

EquiLend's involvement matters because distribution, not technology, has historically been the bottleneck for institutional crypto infrastructure. The firm processes a significant share of global securities lending flow and its NGT trading platform is embedded across pension funds, sovereign wealth managers and broker-dealers, the same counterparty universe that has been the slowest to enter digital asset lending.

Who is already on the platform?

Galaxy Digital is the most significant named launch partner. The firm is one of three lenders, alongside Tether and Ledn, holding the bulk of the global CeFi crypto loan book, and Max Bareiss, its Head of Lending, confirmed Galaxy is live and trading. Digital Prime says additional firms have committed but has not named them publicly. The 2023 version of Tokenet, launched before this EquiLend tie-up, listed Anchorage Digital, Xapo Bank and EDX Clearing among early ecosystem participants, providing a baseline of regulated counterparties already familiar with the platform.

What does this signal for the broader market?

Two things. First, institutional crypto lending is consolidating around traditional-finance operating models rather than DeFi-native ones, despite onchain borrowing growing 959% from the 2022 bottom to $19.1 billion by Q4 2024 per Galaxy Research. Pension funds, agent lenders and prime brokers are unlikely to plug into permissionless protocols at scale; they need recalls, mark-to-market and standardised documentation. Second, the securities finance industry itself is moving onto the digital asset side, EquiLend's involvement follows a broader trend of incumbent market infrastructure providers, including DTCC and Clearstream, building tokenisation and digital asset rails.

For institutional allocators, the practical read is that the infrastructure gap that has kept many pension funds and insurance company programs out of crypto lending is starting to close. Whether Tokenet captures meaningful market share will depend on how many of EquiLend's existing clients sign up over the next 12 months, and on how the platform handles its first stressed market event.

Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers

Institutional digital asset lending is one of the clearest tests of whether traditional finance plumbing can absorb crypto or whether crypto will continue to build its own parallel infrastructure. Tokenet's launch with EquiLend distribution sits on the TradFi side of that line, and it pulls one of the top three CeFi lenders, Galaxy, with it.

For investors, the takeaway is that the recovery in crypto credit markets is increasingly being built on the same workflows, risk controls and counterparty standards as securities finance.

For asset managers and treasury teams considering digital asset lending mandates, the platform infrastructure to support institutional participation is now materially closer to parity with traditional markets.

By Koen Vanderhoydonk - FinanceX Magazine