Mike Cagney’s second act: Turning blockchain into Wall Street’s new plumbing

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Mike Cagney’s second act: Turning blockchain into Wall Street’s new plumbing Figure’s $1 billion month capped a years-long push to strip out middlemen from credit markets, bringing real-world assets, lending and even equities onchain. What to know: - Figure topped $1 billion in monthly loan originations in March for the first time, validating its tokenized credit marketplace. - CEO Mike Cagney said he is using blockchain to cut intermediaries across securitization, lending and stock borrowing. - New products, from DeFi credit vaults to tokenized equities, aim to democratize access to yield. Mike Cagney has been here before, just not with blockchain. In the early 2010s, he helped reshape consumer lending with SoFi by connecting borrowers directly with capital. Now, at Figure Technology Solutions (FIGR), he said he’s trying to do something similar on a much larger scale: rebuild the infrastructure of credit markets themselves. The plan may be working. Figure crossed $1 billion in monthly loan originations for the first time in March, part of a $2.9 billion first quarter that puts the firm on roughly $12 billion in annualized volume. Cagney, who is speaking at Consensus Miami conference next week, told CoinDesk that the goal is to build new plumbing for these markets. “We’re building a marketplace where credit can move efficiently, without all the traditional layers,” he said. Three levers of value Cagney broke Figure’s model into three core advantages. The first is cost. Tokenizing loans reduces the friction and expense of securitization, cutting out intermediaries that have historically taken significant fees. The second is liquidity. Figure has built what it describes as one of the only continuously updating marketplaces for consumer credit outside of government-backed mortgage systems like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “The loans update in real time, which creates a different kind of market,” Cagney said. The third is access. By bringing these assets onchain, Figure can plug them into decentralized finance (DeFi), allowing a broader range of investors to gain exposure, or borrow against them. That’s where the model starts to blur the line between traditional finance and crypto, Cagney said. Figure’s latest push is into what Cagney calls “democratized prime," essentially opening up prime brokerage-style lending to a wider audience. Through products like its Forge platform, loans are pooled into standardized vaults and converted into tokens that can be used as collateral in DeFi protocols. That standardization is key. “DeFi only works if the collateral is liquid and transparent,” he said. Figure has launched related initiatives on networks like Solana, with plans to expand to Ethereum, allowing users to invest in tokenized credit pools or borrow against them. The company is also experimenting beyond loans. It has introduced a yield-bearing stablecoin, YLDS, backed by traditional assets like Treasurys, with roughly $600 million in balances, and is exploring tokenized equities, issuing its own stock onchain in a way that allows investors to lend against it directly. Cagney pointed to a stark inefficiency in traditional markets. Stock lending can carry borrow rates of 30% or more, while investors often receive only a fraction of that yield. “We can put that value back in the hands of the asset owner,” he said. Pragmatic blockchain For all the ambition, Cagney is quick to draw boundaries. Not everything belongs onchain, he said. Tokenizing property itself, for instance, may not be an efficient use of capital. But financial abstraction, meaning loans, securities and equity are a different story. That pragmatism reflects a broader critique of the crypto industry, which he said has often chased ideas without clear economic grounding. “A lot of things were done just for the sake of it,” he said. “What matters is, does this actually improve the system?” Figure’s growth suggests, at least in one corner of the market, the answer may be yes. The company is profitable, scaling, and approaching $30 billion in cumulative originations. That's still small relative to traditional finance, but it's large enough to be noticed. Cagney said he sees much more room to run. “Blockchain is the most transformative technology, and it will reallocate more public market cap than any technology ever has," he said. "There are whole industries that are going to disappear when it becomes ubiquitous. Someone has to do the work to get there, and that's exactly what we're doing." Read more: Private credit may be the breakout use case for tokenization: Maple's Sidney Powell More For You As Wall Street moves onchain, the year's biggest crypto hack and DeFi crisis is forcing a rethink of risk, security and market structure, industry insiders told CoinDesk. What to know: - A $292 million exploit of Kelp DAO rattled crypto lending markets but is seen by industry insiders as a temporary setback rather than a fundamental barrier to institutional adoption of DeFi. - Wall Street firms including Apollo Global Management and BlackRock are continuing to push into onchain finance, increasing pressure on...

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