Lessons From A Successful Tokenization Project & What Market Structure Reveals About Trump-Linked WLFI’s False Promises: Bits + Bips - Ep. 986

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this double-header episode of Bits + Bips, Steven Ehrlich first speaks with Figure CEO Mike Cagney about why most tokenization projects fail, how Figure built an onchain mortgage replacement, and why he believes big banks may now be leading blockchain innovation. Then, Jason Brett joins the show to explain how an upcoming crypto market structure bill could expose President Trump’s World Liberty Financial as centralized, and why that matters for DeFi, regulation, and the industry’s credibility. Sponsors: Uniswap Mantle Host: Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained Guests: Mike Cagney, Co-founder and CEO of Figure Technology Solutions Jason Brett, Former Banking Regulator With FDIC Links: Unchained: Inside Robinhood’s Big Super App Plan: ‘There’s Still a Lot of Work to Be Done’ Coinbase Launches Stock Trading and Prediction Markets How the GENIUS Act Creates a Built-In Advantage for Banks and Deposit Tokens Timestamps: 🚀 00:00 Introduction 🧠 1:48 What is a HELOC? 💡 4:48 How Figure is turning HELOCs into a mortgage replacement ⚡️ 7:58 How Figure issues loans from origination to disbursement 📍 11:28 Why Figure uses a blockchain ⚠️ 12:15 Cagney explains how liquidity poses a challenge for many tokenization projects 🧏‍♂️ 13:10 Why the real value proposition is in DeFi and how Figure is bring $1 billion on-chain 📃 14:14 Cagney reveals Figure's preferred DeFi platforms 💥 16:09 How the GENIUS Act could drive assets onchain ⚡️ 17:46 How Figure is working towards stablecoin settlement of loans 👀 23:40 Why Cagney says the big banks are doing more disruptive work than the likes of Coinbase ⚖️ 27:53 What Cagney is advocating for around DeFi in DC and his litmus test for decentralization ❕️ 31:30 Why Cagney believes anonymity is not necessary for decentralization CLIP 💡 33:32 How Cagney deals with the pressures of going public 🧠 34:32 Why Cagney has taken a different philosophical approach to Robinhood and Coinbase 💥 37:05 Cagney explains what it takes for tokenization projects to succeed 41:55 Intro 45:51 If crypto finally gets rules, what then? 49:39 Frozen wallets: the DeFi dealbreaker 55:51 Has the White House picked a DeFi side? 56:36 Why this goes beyond “ethics” 58:49 If Trump’s DeFi fails the test… then what? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There isn't this panace of money on blockchain that you can't get to anywhere else.
0:04.4	Money is really smart and it can get to whatever it wants to.
0:06.9	It doesn't need the blockchain to do that.
0:08.8	And so in the beginning, you're introducing something different that introduces friction.
0:14.4	And so, you know, in the beginning, it isn't that it's cheaper for me to finance XYZ on
0:19.3	blockchain or trade PDQ on blockchain or whatever it might be. It's actually, you know, in a lot of circumstances, it's cheaper for me to finance XYZ on blockchain or trade PDQ on blockchain
0:21.7	or whatever it might be.
0:22.8	It's actually, in a lot of circumstances, it's going to be more difficult to do it.
0:27.2	But in the long run, it will make sense.
0:32.1	Hi everyone.
0:33.1	Welcome back.
0:34.1	My name is Steve Arlick.
0:34.6	I'm the executive editor at Unchained.
0:36.7	And in this particular segment is going to be the bits and bips, the interview.
0:41.6	Are you a builder who needs to add on-chain trading to your product?
0:45.2	The Uniswap Trading API from Uniswap Labs offers plug-and-play access to some of the deepest liquidity in crypto.
0:52.2	It's on-chain execution at an enterprise level. More liquidity,
0:56.2	less complexity. Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more. I'm here with Mike Cagney, founder and CEO
1:04.1	of Figure. And we're here to talk about figures, I think, really terrific year. Successful IPO, and they really found product
1:13.7	market fit with regards to putting HELOC loans on their own blockchain called Providence. I wanted
1:22.5	to speak with Mike to kind of get a sense of what the year has been like for him. Now the tokenization has become a very hot topic again,
1:30.0	sort of what helped him succeed when,
	...

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