Why CLOs Are Suddenly DeFi's Hottest Yield Play from Unchained

Why CLOs Are Suddenly DeFi's Hottest Yield Play

7 minutes Posted Jul 10, 2026 at 7:00 pm.

Where the RWA market goes next, from the man building its plumbing: Niklas Kunkel

The yield trade heating up: why CLOs like Centrifuge's JAAA and Apollo's Acred are suddenly everywhere

Galaxy's first tokenized CLO, and why it's a far bigger deal than it looks

Trust no one: how Chronicle checks Galaxy's loan book against its own custodian

The looping trick that turns a 7% CLO yield into 14% or 21%, and the risk hiding inside it

What's coming next: tokenized REITs and equities

The SpaceX pre-IPO token question Niklas keeps getting asked

The catch nobody mentioned: why SpaceX token buyers never actually owned their shares

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Show notes

Niklas Kunkel maps where the RWA market is heading next, from Centrifuge and Apollo's CLOs to Galaxy's first tokenized credit product, then turns to a cautionary tale: some SpaceX pre-IPO token buyers never actually owned the shares they thought they had.

Host:

Steven Ehrlich - Host of Bits + Bips and Head of Research at Sharplink

Guest:

Niklas Kunkel - Founder and CEO of Chronicle Labs

This clip is from a longer conversation on crypto oracles, tokenized real-world assets, and Chronicle Labs' work verifying them. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/HW9Cu_E8DnU

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