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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.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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 Friday 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 <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/figure-stock-drops-crypto-linked-volatility" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Wall Street and the DeFi world</a> 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.&nbsp;<img alt="Bernstein says Figure's Q1 results shows uniqueness of blockchain marketplaces" height="649" src="https://s3-images.ctmedia.io/media/content/screenshot-2026-05-17-104900-pm.png" width="916">
Figure Technology's ecosystem. Source: Bernstein
On management’s May 12 earnings <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FIGR/earnings/FIGR-Q1-2026-earnings_call-572329.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">call</a>, 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.&nbsp;
“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, <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/redstone-settlement-layer-rwa-liquidity-gap-defi-lending" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">institutional investors remain skeptical</a> 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: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/tokenized-rwa-market-cap-spiked-in-the-last-15-months" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Tokenized RWA market grows 420% since 2025 on regulatory clarity, access</a>
<h2 id="strong-tokenized-credit-market-could-draw-from-wide-swath-strong">Tokenized credit market could draw from wide swath</h2>
In 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 <a href="https://app.rwa.xyz/credit" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">data</a> 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.<img alt="Bernstein says Figure's Q1 results shows uniqueness of blockchain marketplaces" height="739" src="https://s3-images.ctmedia.io/media/content/screenshot-2026-05-17-103200-pm.png" width="1613">
Snapshot of current size and scope of global tokenized credit market. Source: <a href="https://app.rwa.xyz/credit" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">RWA.xyz</a>
Other projects are already experimenting with bringing credit onchain. Centrifuge has<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/centrifuge-brings-tokenized-credit-and-treasury-products-to-monad" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"> expanded its decentralized finance platform to include tokenized credit</a> 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<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/figure-hastra-expand-tokenized-credit-auto-loans" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"> through the Hastra DeFI protocol</a>, 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: <a href="https://cointelegraph-magazine.com/guide-top-emerging-global-crypto-hubs-2026/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026</a>

Bernstein says Figure's Q1 results shows uniqueness of blockchain marketplaces

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