It’s a strange pairing, maybe even an unlikely one. A developer in Canada, who goes by Keef online, is trying to bring crypto-based lending to a group that, by his own admission, isn’t exactly clamoring for it: Pokémon card collectors.
“These people don’t really want to go on-chain,” he said, referring to the digital NFT versions of the cards. He thinks most collectors outside the crypto world are pretty apprehensive about the whole idea. And you can see why. It’s a big ask.
A Platform for Pawning Pikachu?
His concept is a platform where people could use their digital Pokémon cards as collateral for loans. The idea is to unlock cash from collections that might otherwise just sit in a binder. Use your cards to buy more cards, as he puts it.
But his startup is still mostly an idea. He’s raising funds and sharing mock-ups with a nostalgic Game Boy look. It’s part of a wider, curious trend of trying to tokenize just about everything, with Pokémon cards leading the charge for collectibles.
Not Everyone’s Convinced
There are some pretty obvious hurdles, though. For one, the value of a card isn’t as simple as checking a chart. It’s not like a typical crypto asset with a clear floor price. Pricing comes from off-chain sources—eBay sales, grading companies, collector forums. That makes it messy.
Nico le Jeune, co-founder of the marketplace Courtyard, sees limited appeal. He told Decrypt that borrowing against a card worth $100 doesn’t make much sense for a user. But for a card worth $200,000? Perhaps. His platform has experimented with lending, but it’s not their focus.
In one case, a user took out a tiny $53 loan against a Venusaur card NFT. They were later liquidated for missing payments. Keef actually sees that as a potential upside—a way for dealers to snag cards at a discount.
The Custody Problem
Then there’s the physical world problem. Ryan Zurrer of Dialectic pointed out a classic risk: what if the company holding the actual, physical card just… disappears with it? The digital token would still exist, representing nothing. It’s a trust issue that applies to any tokenized physical asset, from gold bars to Charizards.
It all hinges on the credibility of the graders and the custodians. The system has to assume they’re acting in good faith.
Still, the market is growing. Courtyard, which issues its NFTs on Polygon, saw a massive jump in sales volume recently. Other platforms on Solana are doing something similar. It’s a fractured market, though. To reach everyone, you’d need to support multiple blockchains, which Keef says he’s planning to do.
Maybe the biggest challenge for a project like Keef’s is simplicity. If the process is too complex or the risks of liquidation are too high, it’ll never catch on with mainstream collectors. His plan is to focus on high-value cards, where prices are more stable. Fewer sudden price swings means fewer unexpected liquidations.
It feels like an experiment. For now, the people using these platforms might not even realize they’re touching crypto at all. And maybe that’s the point. The tech is just a tool, not the main event. Whether collectors will want to use that tool to leverage their collections, though, is still a very open question.
