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. His career has focused on applying technology, from early derivative pricing models to blockchain infrastructure, to innovate in lending, capital markets, and asset management. ^[2]

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. ^{[1] [3]}

Career

Early Career and Entrepreneurship

Cagney began his career in 1994 at Wells Fargo, initially working as an analyst developing C++ code for pricing financial derivatives. He was later promoted to lead the bank's financial products group, where his responsibilities included managing structured product development, derivative trading, and proprietary trading. In this capacity, he oversaw a portfolio with a daily Value at Risk (VaR) of $25 million. In 2000, Cagney co-founded his first company, Finaplex, a wealth management software firm that provided solutions to major financial institutions. He directed the company's product strategy, sales, and professional services, successfully raising over $39 million in venture capital. Finaplex was acquired by Broadridge Financial Solutions in 2007. ^{[1] [2]}

From 2005 to 2016, Cagney co-founded and managed Cabezon Investment Group, a global macro hedge fund that catered to family office clients and focused on concentrated, directional trades across various asset classes. Concurrently, he served as the board chair for ReFlow Services, a company that offered liquidity and tax management solutions to the mutual fund industry. ^{[1] [4]}

Social Finance (SoFi)

In 2011, while studying at Stanford, Cagney co-founded Social Finance, commonly known as SoFi, with four fellow students. The company was established with the initial goal of lowering the cost of student loans by connecting students and recent graduates with alumni investors. Serving as CEO and board chair, Cagney led SoFi's expansion from its initial pilot program at Stanford into a diversified financial services company. Under his leadership, SoFi raised $1.9 billion in capital, including a $1 billion round led by Softbank in 2015. The company launched the first non-bank, consumer-rated securitization and broadened its product offerings to include mortgages, personal loans, wealth management, and life insurance. By the time of his departure in 2017, SoFi had funded over $20 billion in loans to nearly 500,000 members and had achieved a valuation exceeding $4 billion. Cagney resigned from his positions at SoFi in September 2017 amid workplace controversies. ^{[1] [2]}

Figure and Provenance Blockchain

In 2018, Cagney co-founded Figure Technology Solutions with his wife, June Ou. The company was created to build financial products and marketplaces using blockchain technology. Figure achieved several industry firsts, including originating the first consumer loan on a blockchain, executing the first on-chain loan securitizations, and launching a bank-issued stablecoin. The company raised over $400 million in capital and, by 2025, had funded more than $16 billion in loans. ^{[5] [2]}

Concurrent with Figure, Cagney and Ou founded the Provenance Blockchain, a public, distributed, proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for the financial services industry. It serves as the underlying infrastructure for Figure's products and other financial applications. By 2025, Provenance was reported to be the largest public blockchain by the value of real-world assets (RWAs), having processed over $50 billion in RWA lending transactions. ^[4]

In March 2024, Figure underwent a corporate restructuring, splitting into two distinct entities: Figure, a lending and technology company where Cagney served as chairman, and Figure Markets, a decentralized finance and trading platform where he became CEO. The two companies were recombined in 2025, with Cagney assuming the role of executive chairman. In 2025, Figure Markets launched $YLDS, described as the first public, SEC-effective fixed-income stablecoin, and Democratized Prime, a DeFi lending protocol. In October 2025, the recombined Figure entity went public on the NASDAQ under the ticker FIGR, achieving a valuation of $7.6 billion. ^{[1] [3]}

Other Activities

In 2024, Cagney was involved in an unsuccessful bid to acquire the bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius. He later supported a successful activist investor campaign that secured two board seats at Ionic Digital, the new entity that emerged from Celsius's bankruptcy. He also participated in a bid to rescue the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX. ^[1]

Views on Finance and Technology

Across numerous public appearances and interviews, Cagney has articulated a vision for fundamentally restructuring financial systems using blockchain technology. His philosophy is informed by his experiences at SoFi, where he observed significant inefficiencies in traditional banking and capital markets. ^[5]

On Capital Markets Disintermediation

A central theme of Cagney's work is the concept of using blockchain to "replace trust with truth" by removing intermediaries from financial transactions. He argues that legacy systems involving banks, brokers, and clearinghouses like the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) create friction and extract value. By facilitating direct, real-time, bilateral transactions on a blockchain, he believes it is possible to reallocate a significant portion of market capitalization from these intermediaries back to consumers and asset holders. He has stated that his goal with Figure is to create a more efficient environment for all transactions, particularly in asset-backed securities, and to eventually build a blockchain-native public equity market. ^{[3] [5]}

On Decentralized Finance and Banking

Cagney foresees a major competitive shift between Wall Street's established infrastructure and emerging decentralized systems. He has predicted a large-scale migration of capital—potentially trillions of dollars from the estimated $18 trillion held in U.S. bank deposits—into cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (DeFi). He believes this transition will be driven by the inherent inefficiencies of the traditional banking sector and catalyzed by regulatory clarity, such as stablecoin legislation or a proposed "Genius Act." In his view, DeFi is positioned to fill the credit and liquidity gaps that will emerge as traditional banks contract, ultimately offering consumers better rates and less reliance on legacy institutions. ^{[4] [6]}

On Blockchain Lending and Real-World Assets

Cagney advocates for originating real-world assets, such as loans, directly on-chain as native digital assets. He argues this approach is superior to wrapping existing assets or relying on oracles, as it ensures the data is immutable and decentralized from its inception. This method, he contends, reduces transactional friction and increases security. He has highlighted the efficiency of lending against native digital assets like Bitcoin, where collateral management and settlement can occur in real-time on the blockchain. This model forms the basis of Figure's strategy to provide faster access to funds by bypassing conventional loan origination and securitization processes. ^{[6] [4]}

Controversies

In September 2017, Cagney resigned as CEO of SoFi. His departure occurred amid media reports and allegations of misconduct and the creation of a toxic work environment at the company. In a statement at the time, Cagney noted that the media attention had become a distraction for the company and its mission. ^{[1] [2]}

Awards and Recognition

In 2016, Cagney was named to Business Insider’s "Creators" list, which recognized the top 100 business visionaries shaping their industries. ^[1]

Personal Life

Cagney is married to June Ou, who is the co-founder of Figure Technology Solutions and the Provenance Blockchain alongside him. ^[1]