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Mike Cagney
Michael "Mike" Cagney is an American financial technology entrepreneur and investor, known as the co-founder of Social Finance (SoFi), Figure Technology Solutions, and the Provenance Blockchain, and as co-founder and CEO of Navra, an on-chain finance platform aimed at bridging traditional finance and blockchain-based products.[14] His career has focused on applying technology, from early derivative pricing models to blockchain infrastructure, to innovate in lending, capital markets, and asset management.[1][8]
Education
Cagney attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he completed both a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Master of Science in Applied Economics in 1994. He later continued his education at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, earning a Master of Science in Management as a Sloan Fellow in 2011.[6]
Career
Cagney began his career at Wells Fargo in 1994 as an analyst, developing C++ code to price derivatives. He later led the financial products group, managing structured product development, derivative trading, and proprietary trading, overseeing a $25 million daily VaR with consistently high returns. In 2000, he left Wells Fargo to co-found Finaplex, a wealth management software company serving major financial institutions. At Finaplex, he directed product strategy, professional services, and sales, raising over $39 million in venture funding before the company was acquired by Broadridge Financial Solutions in 2007.
From 2005 to 2016, Cagney co-founded and managed Cabezon Investment Group, a global macro hedge fund serving family office clients, focusing on concentrated and directional trades across multiple asset classes. During this period, he also served as board chair of ReFlow Services, providing liquidity and tax management solutions for mutual funds, ensuring sufficient capital for operations. In 2011, while at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Cagney co-founded Social Finance (SoFi), where he served as CEO and board chair until 2017. He led product strategy, launched the first non-bank consumer rated securitization, and grew the company to profitability with nearly 500,000 members. SoFi expanded to offer mortgages, personal loans, wealth management, and life insurance, funding over $20 billion in loans and achieving a valuation exceeding $4 billion by the time of his departure amid workplace controversies.
In 2018, Cagney co-founded Figure Technology Solutions with his wife, June Ou, focusing on blockchain-based financial products and marketplaces. Figure introduced what it described as the first consumer loan on-chain, loan securitizations, and a bank-issued stablecoin. In 2024, Figure was separated into Figure and Figure Markets, with Cagney serving as chairman of Figure and CEO of the newly formed Figure Markets, which launched the $YLDS yield-bearing stablecoin, a DeFi lending protocol called Democratized Prime, and the Forge marketplace for standardized, tokenized loan pools.[10] In 2025, the entities were recombined into a single public company, and Cagney took the role of executive chairman of Figure while continuing to promote blockchain-based capital markets across its platforms.[12] By late 2025, Figure reported about $21 billion in cumulative home-equity originations[11] and, as its tokenized credit marketplace expanded, about $2.9 billion in loan-marketplace volume in the first quarter of 2026, supported by products such as YLDS and Democratized Prime.[10] Figure’s platform is structured as a vertically integrated stack that includes the public Provenance blockchain, an SEC-registered alternative trading system for digital assets, yield products such as the YLDS stablecoin, the Democratized Prime securities-lending marketplace, and a tokenized consumer-loan marketplace built on these components.[12] In January 2026, Figure announced the OPEN (On-Chain Public Equity Network) platform as an on-chain public equity network on Provenance for native equity issuance and trading, stating that it planned to issue Figure’s own stock through OPEN and positioning the network as an alternative to legacy market infrastructure for participating securities.[9][13] Cagney and Ou also founded Provenance Blockchain, a public proof-of-stake Layer 1 chain, which became one of the largest public blockchains by real-world assets in 2025.[7] Cagney later co-founded Navra, a platform that seeks to make it easier for users to earn, spend, borrow, and trade via blockchain through an AI-assisted interface, and serves as its CEO.[14]
Figure Technology Solutions IPO
After leaving SoFi in 2017, Cagney co-founded Figure Technology Solutions in 2018 and, in August 2025, the company filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, reportedly seeking a valuation of up to about $4.13 billion. In September 2025, Figure priced its IPO at $25 per share, above its expected range of $20–22 per share, raising $787.5 million in a U.S. public listing under the ticker FIGR that implied an initial valuation of roughly $7.6 billion.[12] In early trading following the debut, reports described Figure’s shares as trading higher than the offer price in an offering led by Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and BofA Securities.
Cagney serves as co-founder and executive chairman of Figure, while June Ou is co-founder and president. Figure operates a blockchain platform for lending, trading, and investing in consumer credit and digital assets built on its Provenance blockchain, and by the end of 2025 had originated about $21 billion in home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) using this technology.[11] The company reports that its process typically funds home equity loans in about 10 days, compared with an industry average of about 42 days for similar products. For the twelve months ended June 30, 2025, Figure facilitated about $6 billion in home equity lending, generated approximately $190.6–191 million in revenue in the first half of 2025 (up roughly 22% year over year), and reported about $29–29.4 million in net income compared with a $13.4 million loss in the first half of 2024, while its dual-class share structure left Cagney with majority voting control after the IPO.[12] In a Yahoo Finance interview in September 2025, Cagney described blockchain’s potential to reduce the number of intermediaries in transactions, using the stock market as an example, and argued that blockchain allows companies to displace reliance on institutional trust with verifiable records. Following the post-listing share price increase, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index estimated Cagney’s net worth at about $1.9 billion as of September 2025, his first appearance on the index, with the estimate attributing most of his wealth to his holdings of Figure shares and assuming that he had sold his SoFi stake after stepping down in 2017.
By late 2025, Figure reported approaching $21–22 billion in cumulative home-equity originations and more than $50 billion in transaction volume on the Provenance blockchain, with over $15 billion in loans and other assets tokenized on the network.[11][12] As of early 2026, analyses of Figure’s capital-markets activities described the YLDS stablecoin as having grown to a circulation in the hundreds of millions of dollars and Democratized Prime as having matched hundreds of millions of dollars in securities-lending offers, reflecting the early scaling of these products alongside Figure’s tokenized consumer-loan marketplace.[12]
The Wallet Co
In August 2026, Cagney, as co-founder and CEO, introduced an early-stage venture called The Wallet Co, describing it as a mobile application intended to combine modern fintech-style usability with self-custody and blockchain-native products, built by members of the teams that founded SoFi and Figure.[1] In his own characterization of the still-developing product, he has outlined planned features such as yield-generating cash, real-world-asset yield, securities-linked prediction markets, and an AI agent embedded in the wallet, presenting these elements as prospective capabilities rather than fully launched offerings.
Interviews
On-Chain Capital Markets
On Crypto In America in October 2025, Cagney discussed the company's recent IPO that valued it at $7.6 billion on the NASDAQ. He emphasized the transformative potential of blockchain technology in capital markets, highlighting its ability to reduce intermediation and facilitate direct transactions, which could reallocate a significant portion of market capitalization to consumers. Cagney shared insights on how his experience in consumer lending at SoFi informed his approach at Figure, where the focus shifted to utilizing blockchain for more efficient lending processes. He reflected on the enthusiasm surrounding Figure's IPO and the importance of leveraging capital for growth, expressing aspirations to pioneer new blockchain applications beyond the mortgage industry, including developing a blockchain-native public equity and addressing banking sector changes driven by recent regulatory shifts.[2]
Rebuilding Finance
In a conversation with Ash Bennington on Real Vision in September 2025, Cagney recounted the inception of his company, Figure, in 2018, which aimed to leverage blockchain technology to transform the finance sector by enhancing capital markets. Cagney outlined how blockchain could replace traditional intermediaries, thereby creating a more efficient environment for transactions, especially in asset-backed securities. He discussed his prior experience with SoFi and how his observations of banking inefficiencies propelled his interest in decentralization and direct lending models. Throughout the discussion, Cagney emphasized the benefits of transactional efficiency, liquidity, and financing possibilities enabled by blockchain, as well as the challenges facing the industry, including regulatory hurdles and the need for the sector to mature to keep pace with shifting financial landscapes. As he looked ahead, Cagney expressed optimism about DeFi's potential to fill gaps left by traditional banking, particularly in the context of significant potential deposit outflows from banks as economic conditions shift.[4]
Everything Exchange
On The Wolf of All Streets podcast in August 2025, Cagney revealed that Figure has executed over $50 billion in real-world asset lending transactions on the Provenance blockchain and is a rapidly growing platform, recently adding $850 million in loans in just one month. Cagney highlighted the potential for a significant portion of the $18 trillion in bank deposits to transition into cryptocurrency, largely driven by new legislation, such as the Genius Act, which emphasizes decentralized finance (DeFi). He explained how Figure aimed to transform capital markets by originating loans on the blockchain, thereby facilitating faster access to funds without the need for traditional intermediaries. The conversation touched on the evolving landscape of financial services, with Cagney foreseeing a competition between Wall Street's traditional infrastructure and new decentralized systems that could redefine lending and asset management, ultimately benefiting consumers through improved rates and reduced reliance on banks.[3]
Blockchain Lending
In an interview with Jake Claver in June 2025, Cagney discussed the potential of blockchain to disrupt traditional banking through efficient lending mechanisms that leverage native digital assets. He shared his insights on the limitations of conventional loan origination and the advantages of using blockchain technology, including reducing transactional friction and enabling real-time, bilateral transactions. Cagney highlighted the increased security of lending against digital assets like Bitcoin and described how his company had successfully originated significant loans utilizing blockchain, revealing plans to integrate more assets into decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. He addressed the implications of upcoming stablecoin legislation, suggesting that such regulatory developments could lead to a significant shift in the financial landscape, resulting in a migration of deposits from banks to other financial instruments. Cagney emphasized the transformative potential of DeFi, demonstrating a clear vision for Figure Markets' role in the evolving financial ecosystem.[5]
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