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Stani Kulechov

Founder & CEO, Aave

Search every verified Stani Kulechov interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, has recently discussed Aave's expansion into traditional finance through tokenized assets. In October 2026, he announced the launch of stock-backed loans on Base, allowing eligible non-US investors to borrow USDC against Coinbase tokenized stocks such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla. Kulechov described this as a way to unlock liquidity against holdings and stated that doing this directly on-chain reduces cost structures. He also announced an "RWA hub" on Avalanche, a market structure for real-world assets with multiple markets for different asset categories, partnering with a cash leg provider. At TOKEN2049 Singapore, Kulechov spoke on the institutional adoption of DeFi and the convergence of traditional and on-chain finance. He noted Aave peaked at $76 billion in net deposits in the previous year and discussed building the Aave app to distribute yield to consumers. He also commented on stablecoins and European regulation, calling the EU's MiCA a big achievement while noting some parts have not played out as expected. In other appearances, Kulechov discussed Aave's evolution over nine years, his view that banks have "failed people in savings," and his prediction that AI-driven transactions in DeFi may soon outnumber human ones. He outlined Aave's future focus on securities finance in the next two to three years and later on what he called "abundance assets," including AI, energy, and robotics.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think generally speaking banks have failed people in savings. Banks typically make a lot of revenue from the people that are not getting the highest yield effectively. So, there is that point, but also I think we're living in a world where cost of living it is increasing, inflation is going up everywhere. Whether it's just basic groceries or energy cost and that affects everyone's life globally. And I think finance”

“I think it's a really interesting chapter in DeFi and all on-chain finance. We started with native crypto assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum and that was really key to establish what Aave, for example, does is interest rate markets on chain by using crypto collateral, Bitcoin, Ethereum and being able to borrow stable coins against those assets. And that market has been growing significantly over the past years and then ob”

“I think this is a sort of like the bigger vision here is that, you know, the living cost has increased around the world and inflation is everywhere, you know, and we see energy prices going up, cost of living in a lot of cities going up. So, inflation is a global problem and a lot of these financial applications, financial services, they are not addressing at a sort of a global scale or providing the best opportunity”

“I think this is a really exciting chapter for a whole industry. So, obviously, we all started from like crypto native assets and Bitcoin, Ethereum as a as a collateral and expanding from there. Um we grew up to uh 76 billion um net deposit last year. And it's a fundamentally a a a great example of how you can have a a resilient system running on chain at 24/7 providing lending and borrowing. Now, this is a all great ”

“I think that Europe has been in a very advanced stage of being able to actually get regulation around crypto with MiCA earlier. I think it's a big achievement. Some pieces of MiCA work really well. Some pieces hasn't been able to play out really well. And I think what is really interesting is that early on MiCA didn't really touch decentralized finance wasn't significant enough. Now it's touching more base on stable ”

“What's actually happening here is that this is a market deployed on base where you can use Coinbase tokenized stocks as a collateral on Aave and borrow USDC. And the collateral that can be used is Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla tokenized versions for users that are non-US audiences where you can actually borrow that 24/7 basis. So whether that's even during trading hours, outside trading hours, over th”

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