Unlocking Real-World Assets: How Figure Markets is Changing the Game

Well, Fier Markets is a blockchain power platform where users can trade crypto, stocks, bonds, and even credit products all in one place.

Now trades are match off chain for speed, but settled on chain with a legally compliant security entitlement.

Now earlier this year, Fi launched the first interest bearing transferable stablecoin native to a public blockchain.

Fi markets recently launched a $20 million on chain senior lending facility backed by figure home equity lines of credit.

Joining me here at the exchange to tell us more is Nick Cary, head of capital markets at Bigger Markets.

Nick, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me here.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you.

Well, here we are as we wrap up the first half of 2025, and there's been a lot of focus on stablecoins, especially with one of these recent IPOs we had at the exchange.

But tell me the difference between regular stablecoins and yield bearing stablecoins.

I mean, regular stablecoins don't provide any interest, any yield.

Our stablecoin is the first SEC regulated certificate.

It's a digital security, and as a certificate, it operates like a money market fund.

It's a peer to peer transferable, which makes it very much akin to a stablecoin, and it pays interest.

Interest is is accrued daily and paid monthly.

Yeah, and I think it's important to know the SEC regulator part of the stable point, but of course when it comes to what moves YLDS, can you tell me, is it policy, is it sentiment, what's going on?

It's going to be, I mean, a lot of a lot of the digital access community is is is eager to get more.

Regulation into the space stablecoins are here to stay.

The past 2 or 3 weeks I've seen more and more people looking, more and more companies looking to get into the stable point, including large banks.

It's an important, it's going to be an important part of the ecosystem.

The ability to transfer money very, very freely and very quickly is super important.

Nobody carries money anymore.

Nobody carries cash.

The ability also to earn interest is equally as important.

If you look at the digital the additional assets space on the exchanges at about $50 billion worth of USDC, USDT and a few other stable coins that are being posed as collateral.

And the firms that are posting these stable coins as collateral are not earning any interest.

That's $50 billion worth of interest that that the that the trading firms are not capitalizing on.

So being able to earn interest on your collateral, whether it's in the form of yield or others is very important.

And that is a considerable sum.

We're not just talking about 1 billion here so that is important to keep in mind.

And I think there's more building awareness here in the United States when it comes to stablecoins.

I do think if you're in other areas of the world, depending on the market, then there might be more awareness of stablecoin just because of the use cases.

But I do want to move on to HLO here and figure HLO.

So what are you doing?

That's different from your competitors.

I mean, our Hillock business has been very successful for the past 5 years.

We've we've issued more real world assets on the blockchain than anybody else.

Um, what we're doing right now is we are adding HiLOs into our product for democratized prime to allow regular investors, regular retail investors and institutional investors and anybody who wants to access.

In an 8 or 9% yielding product to be able to invest into our Hilock business.

So you can open an account with bigger markets, deposit cash or stable coins and and invest that money into our home equity loan, which is a very stable product and it earns 8 to 9%.

It's a phenomenal product.

What we've seen in the past week and a half, we've been able to see almost over $20 million worth of interest and we're getting more and more interest into that space.

Yeah, and as we wrap up the first half of this year and head into the second half of 2025, whether we're talking about real world assets or we're talking about other areas of the market, we know that when it comes to the macro perspective and what central banks do really matters.

So what are you paying attention to when it comes to the big macro picture and these catalysts?

I'd be interested, I mean, we've been hearing a lot about few banks getting into the stable coin space.

Um, the banks are already in the blockchain space in some form or shape.

Adopting the entire blockchain is a little bit Herculean task for banks because they're they're big.

They have a lot of technology, a lot of infrastructure, but getting into the steel one is going to be is going to be a very important venue for the banks to get into.

What I'd be interested in seeing from a macro perspective if let's say Bank A is going to create their own stablecoin and Bank B is going to have their own.

Stablecoin and so on and so forth.

What is going to be the commonality with all of these stablecoins right now?

The commonality in the fiat spate is the US dollars.

You could take the US dollar, you go to all the banks, and you can deposit.

If JPMorgan and Bank of America and Merrill Lynch and Barclays and everybody starts issuing their own stablecoins, what's the fungibility?

And that's that's the stuff that I'm interested in knowing if anybody's looking at it and how it's going to work.

And you mentioned the banks looking at stable coins, but it's not just financial services firms, it's also the retail sector as well as tech firms here, and it's because of its consumer base and also use cases.

But as we head into the second half of this year, what are some other trends that you're watching and what do you expect to see when it comes to real world ass?

You're going to see more and more firms getting into the tokenized space.

Um, we, we figure likes the idea of tokenizing real world assets, but we believe in digitizing real world assets.

We are already looking into launching the first digital digitally native equities that will be created on our ATS and will have their own unique users.

That's phenomenal.

Uh, you know, a lot of firms are getting into the digital.

Tokenizing space that like some firms are taking equities and they're creating tokenized versions of the equities and allowing institutional clients and retail clients overseas to be able to participate in our in our in our equity market.

That's a great step forward, but it's not, it's not the end game.

I'd like to see and Mike Cagney, our founder, that's his biggest pitch is I want to see digital digital real world assets tokenizing is great.

Digitizing them much better and more powerful, and we have about 30 seconds here.

So based on what you're saying, what does this mean for the retail investor in the near future?

It's going to make a lot easier for them to access everything in the world, you know, being able to own a digital equity and crypto and defy and and other digital securities in one location and being able to say, hey, I own a digital security, I want to buy.

Bitcoin, I can I can I can take my digital security and use it as collateral to buy Bitcoin and take my Bitcoin and as collateral to buy my home equity loan and so on and so forth.

When everything is digital and on the blockchain, it makes a lot easier for everybody to move it around and and use it for any benefits they need to do.

OK, Nick, well, we will have to leave it there, but thank you so much for simplifying a very complicated thing.

Thank you very much for having me.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.