Autor Cointelegraph by Robert Lakin

Bernstein analysts said Friday that Figure Technology Solutions’ first-quarter earnings report shows that the fintech is fast becoming a company that is unique among blockchain marketplaces.Figure’s May 11 earnings report soundly beat Wall Street estimates on both revenue and EBITDA, with a business that seeks to turn real-world credit assets into blockchain-native instruments that can be traded, funded and financed more efficiently.  As Figures builds out a blockchain-native capital market ecosystem, the analysts expect the company will surprise investors with how it differs from balance sheet-based fintech lending platforms, seeing FIGR stock as a real-time reflection of blockchain loan volumes.“FIGR’s live blockchain data suggests an all-time high record Q2 upcoming,” Bernstein analysts said in a May 15 note to clients. “As the market gets more efficient in tracking live blockchain volume data, we believe FIGR’s stock price should become a real-time reflection of blockchain loan volumes,” they said.Figure is trying to sell Wall Street and the DeFi world on the idea that it is not merely a fast-growing home equity lender (HELOC) wrapped in crypto branding, but a full-stack blockchain capital markets platform. Figure Technology’s ecosystem. Source: BernsteinOn management’s May 12 earnings call, executive chairman and co-founder Mike Cagney said that after bringing Figure’s digital assets over to DeFi for financing about a year ago, it faced a challenge common to all real-world assets (RWA) on blockchain. “DeFi is asset-based lending. The premise is that the collateral backing the loan is liquid. What are the collateral as a whole loan? Given an LTV breach, how does a lender take a fractional position in the whole loan? Even if they could, where would they sell it?” Cagney said that the company’s Forge platform converts whole loans into small, single-dollar liquid participation units.Bernstein said it sees Figure building a complete marketplace where real-world assets, both loans and eventually equitie, can serve as active collateral for borrowing and lending liquidity. “That’s going more towards a model where FIGR simply clips a small fee of the entire blockchain economy within its ecosystem,” they said.Meanwhile, institutional investors remain skeptical of blockchain-for-finance narratives, something CEO Michael Tannenbaum acknowledged in the call, arguing that Figure’s advantage is operational rather than ideological. He described AI as “the brain” and blockchain as “the nervous system,” arguing that blockchain-native data structures make underwriting, compliance and loan verification easier to automate.Related: Tokenized RWA market grows 420% since 2025 on regulatory clarity, accessTokenized credit market could draw from wide swathIn previous research, Bernstein has put an estimated value of $4 trillion on the addressable market for total annual volume of credit origination across multiple loan categories that could eventually move onchain as tokenized assets.That includes lending such as mortgages, auto loans, home equity lines of credit and small-business loans — segments where Figure is expanding beyond its core business.Tokenized credit remains a small segment of the broader RWA market. Industry data shows the sector is currently valued at around $5.14 billion, highlighting the gap between today’s adoption and the longer-term growth opportunity Bernstein outlines.Snapshot of current size and scope of global tokenized credit market. Source: RWA.xyzOther projects are already experimenting with bringing credit onchain. Centrifuge has expanded its decentralized finance platform to include tokenized credit and US Treasury products on new blockchain networks, aiming to connect institutional-grade assets with DeFi liquidity.Figure has moved into areas such as auto loans through the Hastra DeFI protocol, where tokenized credit products are designed to plug into decentralized finance and broader blockchain markets. Launched last year by the Provenance Blockchain Foundation, the protocol swaps wrapped yields for a Prime token. Recently, Hastra announced its launch on the Morpho protocol on Ethereum, opening up an even larger addressable DeFi market.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

Strategy chairman Michael Saylor on Sunday signaled the Bitcoin treasury company would be buying more of the cryptocurrency in the week ahead while also encouraging retailer shareholders to vote on a proxy measure enabling semi-monthly dividend payouts on the company’s STRC perpetual preferred stock.“Big Dot Energy” was Saylor’s tweet late Sunday morning to accompany a bubble chart tracking Strategy’s BTC purchases over the past nearly six years. That chart, from Iceland-registered StrategyTracker.com, has been consistently posted by Saylor in the days ahead of a corporate purchase.Saylor’s “Big Dot Energy” message on Sunday. Source: Michael Saylor on X.comA purchase this week would build on Strategy’s current 818,869 Bitcoin holdings which had a combined market cap of about $67.2 billion based on a market price of $77,996.91 at time of publications, according to StrategyTracker.com.In addition to the purchase signal, both Saylor and Strategy’s official social media feeds showed posts encouraging retail shareholders, who own 80% of the company’s perpetual Stretch preferred stock (STRC), to vote on a proxy measure that would permit the company to make semi-monthly payouts to STRC shareholders.Related: STRC preferred stock investors are mispricing major ‘dislocation’ risk: AnalystStressing dividend amendment is for retail holders, proxy vote is not a shoo-inStrategy is proposing to pay semi-monthly dividends on STRC, instead of monthly. The company claims that if approved and adopted, it will lead to reduced reinvestment lag, enhanced liquidity, market efficiency and increased price stability.Three weeks ahead of the June 8 proxy vote deadline, Saylor and Strategy are making a full press to get retail shareholders to return their proxy votes. “If you are a $STRC shareholder and have not already voted, please take a moment to do it now. Together, we can make history and establish the $100 standard for Digital Credit,” read another of Saylor’s Sunday posts on X. The company’s feed acknowledged the size and importance of retail investors. “80% of $STRC is held by retail investors. This amendment is for you. Vote for STRC to pay semi-monthly dividends. Your vote matters. Make it count,” read the post.One of several posts on Strategy’s official feed urging proxy vote. Source: Strategy on X.comTo be sure, retail investors have shown limited interest in casting proxy votes. A November research note from The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance revealed data that showed retail investors have consistently voted only about 29% of their owned shares during the past five proxy voting seasons. Institutional holders have voted about 77%.Strategy is not taking any chances. It has rescheduled a live Q&A session for retail investors with Saylor and CEO Phong Le to May 20 at 5 ET. The session, slated to be moderated by Natalie Brunell, host of the Coin Stories podcast. The Q&A will be livestreamed on YouTube and on X. Shareholders are being invited to submit questions ahead of the session.Magazine: Big Questions: Can Bitcoin save you from the dreaded Cantillon Effect?

Space and Time (SXT), a level-1 data blockchain that secures onchain finance projects, has launched a virtual vault platform that it says is purpose-built for institutional lending.The Microsoft-backed blockchain said on Tuesday that its new virtual vaults can be configured by institutional lenders and borrowers to their specific agreement, with cryptographically verified, continuously updated visibility into borrower collateral across the centralized exchanges and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols where it actually sits.Real-time verification of collateral has long vexed the institutional lending sector, with generic solvency metrics falling short of practical needs.“We built Space and Time so both institutions and onchain protocols could verify the data they act on, and Virtual Vaults are the clearest expression of that yet. Institutional lenders need to see exactly what collateral backs a loan, exactly when they need to see it,” said Nate Holiday, co-founder of Space and Time and CEO of MakeInfinite Labs, in a statement shared with Cointelegraph.Screenshot of SXT Chain Explained. Source: YouTubeEach vault is configured to the specific terms of its lending agreement, that is, which venues to monitor, which assets qualify as eligible collateral and what thresholds trigger alerts, according to the statement.Related: Fireblocks launches tool for institutions to earn yield on stablecoinsVirtual vaults extend the platform into onchain credit, bringing verifiable controls and reporting to the systems institutional lenders and borrowers actually need to operate at scale, the company said. Microsoft made VC investment, then integrated SXT with Fabric intelligent data platformM12, Microsoft’s venture capital arm, participated in Space and Time’s Series A funding round and led a 2022 strategic funding round, according to Token Terminal data. SXT’s most recent round, in August 2024, raised $20 million from investors including Lightspeed Faction and Arrington Capital, brought the total to $50 million. A company spokesperson declined to comment on current financing plans.Space and Time was integrated with Microsoft Fabric a year ago and was recently designated a Microsoft co-selling cloud solution. The software giant touts Fabric as an end-to-end “intelligent data platform” that its deployed across its cloud offerings. Since then, the Space and Time Foundation has partnered with Southeast Asia’s Indomobil to onboard 50,000 students to the ecosystem. That program uses Space and Time to store proof of course completion and students pay for courses in SXT.Space and Time (SXT) market cap over last 12 months. Source: Token TerminalThe blockchain’s native token, SXT, is deployed on multiple chains, including Ethereum and Base. At time of publication, CoinMarketCap data showed there were 368,350 token holders. SXT had a market cap of $21.92 million.Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fightCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) plans to pilot trading of tokenized securities in July with a goal of a full service launch in October.The post-trade market infrastructure giant said Monday that more than 50 TradFi and DeFi firms will play a role in the design and deployment of the service. That DTCC Industry Working Group includes Alpaca, Anchorage Digital, BitGo Bank & Trust, BlackRock, Circle and Fireblocks, along with some of the biggest banks in the country.Source: DTCCDTCC, which currently custodies $114 trillion in liquid assets from stocks to exchange-traded funds, said it expects the service will enable tokenization of real-world assets that provide the same entitlements, investor protections and ownership rights as the assets held in traditional form.In December, DTCC received permission from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer tokenization services on pre-approved blockchains for three years. “Although this program is a pilot subject to various operational limitations, it marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain,” SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said at the time.Related: Tokenized assets climb to $23.6B as investors seek always-on marketsWhile the pilot phase will test limited production trades, the full service is expected to tokenize a specific set of some of the most-widely traded liquid assets, including exchange-traded funds tracking major indexes, Russell 1000 constituents, US Treasury bills, bonds and notes, according to DTCC’s announcement. Tokenized RWA market grows, but remains concentratedThe value of tokenized real-world assets have surged 66% in 2026, with funds, gold and equities driving growth across public blockchains.Data from the analytics platform RWA.xyz show that tokenized stocks alone expanded from $375.4 million on May 3, 2025, to about $1.21 billion on May 3, 2026. Kraken’s xStocks platform has emerged as one of the more visible entrants, reporting more than $25 billion in cumulative trading volume since launching last year.In January, the New York Stock Exchange and its parent company, the Intercontinental Exchange, announced the development of a new platform to trade tokenized stocks and ETFs. The platform, subject to regulatory approvals, is intended to underpin a new NYSE trading venue for tokenized securities.Tokenized stocks have recently topped $1.2 billion in value. Source: RWA.xyzRather than creating a parallel crypto-native marketplace, the venue is designed to operate within existing US market rules while leveraging blockchain-based settlement infrastructure.Both NYSE Group and Kraken’s parent, Payward, are part of the DTCC Industry Working Group announced Monday.In March, TD Securities’ Reid Noch, vice president for electronic trading, said tokenization is beginning to carry real implications for market structure, pointing to the NYSE’s proposed tokenized equities alternative trading system as a key development.Noch described the structure as closer to a “2.0” market shift, where custody and settlement would remain anchored to the DTCC, while trading would comply with National Best Bid and Offer requirements.Magazine: How to fix suspected insider trading on Polymarket and KalshiCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.