This article is authorized to be reprinted from Automatic Insight Beating, with copyright belonging to the original author.

The founder of Figure, Mike Cagney, is the archetypal "American Hustler." On Wall Street, he is a financial hunter who connects derivatives and investors; in California, he is a storyteller who can package loan narratives into tech startups.

He has never been a disruptor but rather a keen insider—aware of regulatory gaps, market sentiments, and what investors want to buy.

His past experience almost encapsulates all the tricks of American financial innovation: cashing out from Credit Suisse during the internet bubble; founding SoFi during the student loan era, and then quietly rising in the gray area of the HELOC market frozen by the subprime mortgage crisis, which banks avoided discussing.

Now, Figure aims to become the first stock of RWA (Real World Asset) with its "on-chain loans."

But this time, does it genuinely want to ring the bell, or is it yet another skilled narrative cash-out? No one knows. All that is known is that Mike Cagney is back—bringing a brand new story.

On the ever-bustling stage of fintech, Mike Cagney always stands at the forefront of the beat. He is not like the steadfast reformers in Silicon Valley narratives; rather, he resembles a well-trained professional dancer—each turn precisely landing on the nodes where the wind blows.

The term "Hustler" can refer to a fighter striving for ideals or a shrewd player manipulating narratives. Cagney straddles both.

He believes in technology but understands the market better; he has vision but never gives up on maneuvering. He can sense the cracks of the times and dares to fill the gaps with "new stories."

His financial adventures began in the 1990s at Wells Fargo. At that time, the American middle class relied on mortgages to get by, and this bank, with its nationwide branches and nearly 10% share of housing credit, firmly controlled a vast retail financial landscape.

Young Cagney was on the front lines of the trading room, managing proprietary trading, designing structured products, and frequently navigating between models and profits—he quickly learned how to be the smartest one between "risk pricing" and "regulatory arbitrage."

He also saw the inertia of the banking system: bloated processes, high costs, and operations severely disconnected from technology. These observations outlined a map for him of the "next battle."

In 2000, at the peak of the internet bubble, he decisively left the bank and founded Finaplex, a software provider for wealth management institutions.

It was a brilliant test. He did not "invent" any new products nor intended to reconstruct the industry; he simply "hit" the valuation dividends and technology outsourcing demands of the bubble era just right.

Ultimately, Finaplex was acquired by Broadridge, and Cagney successfully cashed out, completing his first entrepreneurial loop of "low-cost story exchange, high-premium company sale." At that moment, he resembled an arbitrageur between finance and technology rather than a reformer.

He then founded Cabezon Investment Group, a family office in the form of a hedge fund, managing over $35 million, officially entering the deep waters of global macro trading.

However, what truly changed his trajectory was not the gains or losses of positions but the arrival of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.

The global financial system collapsed that year. U.S. housing prices plummeted, a wave of financial institution failures surged, credit markets froze, banks withdrew loans, investors panicked, and regulations tightened comprehensively. Countless funds perished, and Silicon Valley's venture capital came to a halt.

Yet Cagney chose another direction in this storm—he turned to Stanford University's business school, temporarily stepping away from the front lines.

This seemed like a "retreat," but in reality, it was a calm restart. He avoided the most intense waves of the financial tsunami but remained in the latter half of the story: in business school, he not only updated his theoretical framework but also rebuilt a network leading to the "next windfall."

In 2011, as regulations tightened and banks remained cautious, the market was already restless. Cagney sensed another gap: "American college students are burdened with high debt but struggle to obtain low-interest loans from banks, and this group is the future credit backbone for decades to come."

Thus, he teamed up with four Stanford alumni to establish SoFi, focusing on entering the student loan refinancing market with a "P2P alumni funding" model.

This model appeared idealistic but was, in fact, a mature narrative combination: on one hand, relying on technology platforms to reduce intermediary costs; on the other hand, constructing a community narrative through "high-quality youth helping each other," supplemented by risk pricing and capital leverage—straddling the boundaries allowed by regulations while firmly capturing venture capital's attention.

SoFi became an instant success. Within a few years, it grew from issuing $200 million in loans to 2,500 students to becoming a unicorn valued at over $4 billion, with cumulative loans exceeding $20 billion, becoming a significant player in the restructuring of American household debt. SoftBank invested $500 million, betting on "the Amazon of new finance."

Cagney thus became one of the best storytellers in the crypto-finance narrative. He frequently referenced sci-fi works like "Snow Crash" in public speeches, claiming to "reshape the credit structure with technology," and even proposed the grand vision of "eliminating banks." He described SoFi as "the future financial operating system," not just a loan company.

However, on a more realistic level, what SoFi tapped into was a gray area lacking regulation, with ambiguous policies and market gaps—"using student loans as a pretext to leverage speculative capital."

The U.S. student debt crisis has never eased, with total debt exceeding $1.7 trillion in 2023, while SoFi's business logic is to package this group's debt into structured assets and sell them to investors.

A deeper irony lies in the fact that SoFi's emphasized "inclusivity" is, in reality, extremely selective towards borrowers, preferring high-income, highly educated, and high-credit white-collar youth—helping not those who need it most but rather the "high-quality risk group" most easily recognized by capital.

Ultimately, SoFi's rapid expansion encountered a "cultural explosion." In 2017, employees reported that a "fraternity culture" prevailed within the company, and CEO Cagney was accused of sending sexually suggestive texts and condoning inappropriate behavior by executives. That year, he resigned as CEO and chairman, leaving once again in the aftermath of a windfall.

And this time, he did not defend himself. He simply stated, "Negative news has begun to interfere with the company's mission." Like an actor at the center of the stage knowing the plot has reached a transition moment—he left again, once more brewing the next narrative.

Cagney's story has never truly stopped. With the SoFi scandal's heat still lingering, he quickly re-entered the battlefield with his wife June Ou (former CTO of SoFi), founding Figure Technologies within just three months and swiftly securing $50 million in funding.

A founder just ousted from the board due to scandal immediately restarting a similarly modeled new company—this is not reflection but a gambler making a bet on a bigger game.

He nearly replicated SoFi's path, only this time shifting focus from student loans to home equity lines of credit. Figure's entry point is HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit), a product allowing homeowners to borrow against their property equity, structured like a credit card, with flexible limits and free withdrawals.

Compared to traditional mortgages that provide one-time loans, HELOC is lighter and easier to get lost in. It serves as a playground for financial technology controllers and could also be a trap for those with weak risk awareness.

This is not Cagney's first time stepping onto this gray boundary. Before the 2008 crisis, HELOC was a cash machine for American households, with soaring home prices and lenient reviews, banks competing to lend, while borrowers used additional loans to bypass regulatory levers.

After the bubble burst, the HELOC market collapsed, large banks withdrew, and regulators significantly tightened standards, leading to a decade of market silence.

At this moment, Cagney, like a speculator familiar with the value of ruins, stepped onto the ground feared by predecessors—his instincts remained sharp, knowing that "neglected" areas are the best places to bet.

The recovery of the real estate market also drove the rise of HELOC. Rising home prices rebuilt asset equity, and by 2025, usable asset equity is expected to reach an all-time high.

As mortgage rates climb, consumers are turning to HELOC to consolidate high-interest debt or fund home renovations, favoring HELOC's flexibility over more expensive refinancing options.

However, large banks remain cautious about HELOC due to past losses and regulatory factors.

Cagney, leveraging years of experience exploring financial fault lines, once again sniffed out opportunities from the cracks, using the experience and resources accumulated at SoFi, along with blockchain technology, to tap into this market deemed too risky by banks, creating Figure's core business.

Figure Lending is the starting point of Figure's entire business, focusing on initiating HELOCs, mortgage refinancing, and other loan products, providing consumers with a peer-to-peer lending platform, and utilizing blockchain technology to verify and record borrower information in real-time, eliminating a large number of manual operations and intermediary links in traditional loan processes, thus achieving rapid approval and disbursement.

Figure claims its HELOC loans can be funded within 5 days, far faster than the weeks required by traditional banks.

After initiating HELOC mortgages, transactions are recorded on the Provenance chain, becoming tokenized on-chain digital assets (Tokenized Equity).

This tokenization strategy seamlessly integrates traditional financial assets into the blockchain ecosystem, namely RWA (Real World Asset).

After accelerating securitization using blockchain, these assets can quickly enter the secondary market (Figure Connect) or lending platforms (Democratized Prime).

Figure typically sells its initiated loans while retaining servicing rights, providing flexible investment opportunities. Its Figure Connect is a blockchain-based secondary private credit market connecting loan initiators (such as third-party lending companies like The Loan Store and Movement Mortgage) with investors (such as funds like Bayview Asset Management and Saluda Grade), and Figure Connect also allows loan initiators to receive forward commitments, locking in active bids and controlling loan pricing.

Thanks to the real-time data verification and recording capabilities of blockchain, Figure Connect can shorten settlement times from months to days, replacing the intermediary role of traditional investment banks and charging platform fees.

Its DeFi platform, Democratized Prime, based on its HELOC asset pool, takes it a step further by using HELOC pools (RWA) as collateral in a Dutch auction model, with interest rates continuously decreasing until the borrowing parties' rates align.

This allows partners like Synergy One Lending to provide funding for initiated projects or lend for profit, enabling small and medium investors to also access high-value returns such as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that were once reserved for institutions.

Cagney's financial alchemy reaches its peak with its interest-bearing stablecoin.

In February 2025, as the stablecoin narrative was gaining momentum, Figure leveraged its business advantages to register the stablecoin as a bond, launching the first SEC-approved interest-bearing stablecoin, $YLDS, backed by assets such as government bonds, securities, and corporate bonds, offering an annualized yield of 3.8% for holders.

The launch of $YLDS represents a perfect combination of narrative hype and practicality, attracting users to join Figure's ecosystem through promises of liquidity and passive income.

In this closed-loop system, loans are converted into tokenized assets, traded on Figure Connect, collateralized on Democratized Prime, and integrated with $YLDS.

This showcases Cagney's strong narrative and resource integration capabilities, as he is well-versed in various financial instruments and products, effortlessly structuring a system that attracts consumers, institutions, and even regulators, all of whom can be drawn in and utilized by him.

Cagney's ability is also reflected in his fundraising capabilities. Figure has raised over $600 million in equity financing, attracting several star VCs from the crypto and fintech sectors, such as Ribbit Capital and 10T Holdings.

In addition, Figure has also attracted traditional financial giants involved in real estate, including Jefferies, WSFS Institutional Services, MUFG Innovation Partners, Apollo Asset Management, and Sixth Street.

These institutions collectively provided over $1.5 billion in debt financing, primarily secured by Figure's HELOC portfolio, demonstrating Cagney's ability to package high-risk assets into irresistible investment opportunities.

In 2020, Figure hired former Morgan Stanley securitization head Robert Hershy and, in 2023, completed a $195 million mortgage-backed securities transaction with 20 investors.

By 2025, Figure took it a step further by issuing $355 million in FIGRE 2025-HE3 bonds, achieving a Standard & Poor's AAA rating. Such institutional backing alleviates the risk aversion of consumers and investment institutions, successfully isolating Figure's HELOC products from the subprime HELOCs that led to the crisis.

This ability to package high-risk products and pool securities, using ratings to enhance product image, mirrors the financial strategies of banks before the subprime crisis.

However, this securitization capability also allows Figure to convert loans into liquid capital, expanding its lending business without the balance sheet constraints that traditional banks might face, thereby reducing its reliance on public market financing.

In terms of revenue and business data, Figure has not disclosed much information.

IncFact estimates that Figure's annual revenue exceeds $500 million, ranking it among the top consumer loan companies. LeadIQ reports that revenue for 2025 will be between $50 million and $100 million, which does not seem overly optimistic considering the loan issuance volume Figure has announced.

Since its inception, Figure has issued a cumulative $16 billion in HELOC loans to 160,000 households and partnered with 135 lenders, including giants like CMG Financial and Guaranteed Rate.

In the $100 billion to $150 billion U.S. HELOC market, Figure holds a 3.4% to 5.1% market share, making it the largest non-bank provider.

In 2024, Figure issued a total of $5.1 billion in HELOC loans, a 50% year-over-year increase, with an adjusted net profit of $33.9 million for the year and an EBITDA margin exceeding 30%, demonstrating its potential for profitability.

Cagney pointed out that compared to traditional banks, blockchain technology saves Figure hundreds of dollars on each HELOC loan.

In the emerging RWA market, Figure has tokenized $9.9 billion in active loans (primarily HELOC), capturing a monopoly share of 50-99% in the $10 billion to $20 billion private credit RWA sector.

The RWA lending platform, Democratized Prime, launched in June 2025, has achieved a TVL of $15 million, becoming the first truly RWA-backed DeFi lending pool in the crypto space.

Although Figure's current business model revolves around HELOC lending, Cagney's ambitions for Figure have always extended far beyond that.

Figure ventured into payment systems in 2021, led the development of the USDF stablecoin through a banking consortium, attempted to apply for a banking license, and entered the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mortgage market after Celsius's bankruptcy.

He is not one of those entrepreneurs in the crypto world driven by technological ideals and financial justice, nor is he a product fanatic in the traditional Silicon Valley sense who believes in "changing the world."

As an old finance professional with 15 years of experience as a trader and hedge fund background, Cagney is inherently not a "believer" but a "scent hound."

He does not dream; he only tells the stories the market wants to hear. He does not stick to paths; he bets where capital opens its mouth. What he does is never about products but about business; each of his innovations resembles a targeted hunt.

Cagney's moral boundaries have repeatedly sparked controversy. SoFi started with student loans, while Figure rose from the ruins left by the subprime crisis. He always resembles a dancer spinning in the gray area—sometimes navigating regulatory gaps, sometimes exploiting loopholes in the social system.

In 2023, he orchestrated a thought-provoking deal: during the bankruptcy liquidation of FTX, Figure took on the disposal of Solana tokens and allowed non-U.S. investors to participate in bidding through special purpose vehicles (SPVs). These tokens were sold for $102 each, while the market price at the time was as high as $166. A crisis, in his hands, became an arbitrage opportunity once again.

However, Figure's market ambitions do not stop at the private equity sector. In August 2025, Figure secretly submitted its IPO application for the third time. This time, it aims to go public as the "first stock of RWA." But the question is—will this truly be a sincere listing, or yet another speculative trial and rehearsal for market hype?

Cagney has not made a direct announcement or launched a promotional campaign; he has quietly submitted the materials. The secretive actions highlight the tension and hesitation before entering the public market.

The RWA narrative constructed by Figure holds immense imaginative potential in the current market, but whether this revolution is disruptive or a disguise remains undetermined.

Cagney has certainly timed it right, but when you string together SoFi, HELOC, P2P, tokenized assets, DeFi, and stablecoins, the main storyline becomes increasingly blurred: Is Figure the next generation of financial infrastructure or a "American scam" under exquisite packaging?

Cagney's story is far from over. The Figure universe he has built is a complex hybrid of blockchain and traditional finance, a product of the fusion of windfalls and regulatory gaps.

He possesses the ability to integrate resources, the talent to weave narratives, and the skill to package high risks into high value. However, Figure's success relies on two variables: one is the sustained enthusiasm of the market, and the other is the narrative's unbreakable integrity.

In the theater of finance, Cagney remains the "Hustler" who understands the rhythm best. He can dance repeatedly in the cracks of the old system, even telling different stories using the same routines.

But the ending of this script will ultimately not be written by him alone. Is it a continuation of the American dream or the final curtain for a speculator? The market and history will have to answer that.

Related: GreedyBear scam group upgrades cryptocurrency theft methods, reaching an "industrialized" scale.

Original: “From Sex Scandal to the First RWA Stock, Figure's 'American Hustle'”

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。