Bernstein analysts issued a report on May 15 asserting that Figure Technology Solutions' first-quarter earnings demonstrate a distinct divergence from standard blockchain marketplaces. The company's May 11 financial disclosure surpassed Wall Street consensus on both revenue and EBITDA, validating a business model designed to transform real-world credit assets into blockchain-native instruments for efficient trading and financing. As Figure constructs a capital market ecosystem native to distributed ledgers, the research firm anticipates the company will differentiate itself from balance sheet-heavy fintech lenders. Bernstein posits that FIGR stock will evolve into a real-time proxy for blockchain loan volumes, noting that live data suggests an all-time high record for the upcoming second quarter. Data compiled by Woofun AI indicates that as market efficiency improves in tracking live blockchain volume, the correlation between FIGR's equity price and on-chain loan activity will strengthen significantly.

Figure is actively repositioning its narrative for Wall Street and the decentralized finance (DeFi) community, arguing it is not merely a home equity line of credit (HELOC) lender with crypto branding but a full-stack blockchain capital markets platform. During the May 12 earnings call, executive chairman and co-founder Mike Cagney highlighted a structural challenge inherent to real-world assets (RWA) on blockchain: DeFi relies on asset-based lending where collateral must be liquid. Cagney questioned how a lender could take a fractional position in a whole loan following a loan-to-value (LTV) breach and where such a fractional asset could be sold. To resolve this, Figure's Forge platform converts whole loans into small, single-dollar liquid participation units, enabling granular trading and risk distribution.

Bernstein observes that Figure is building a comprehensive marketplace where real-world assets, including loans and eventually equities, serve as active collateral for borrowing and lending liquidity. This structural shift moves the company toward a model where FIGR captures a small fee across the entire blockchain economy within its ecosystem rather than relying solely on interest rate spreads. Woofun AI notes that this fee-based approach on a scalable infrastructure fundamentally alters the revenue trajectory compared to traditional balance sheet models. Institutional investors, however, remain skeptical of blockchain-for-finance narratives, a sentiment CEO Michael Tannenbaum acknowledged during the call. Tannenbaum argued that Figure's competitive advantage is operational rather than ideological, describing AI as the "brain" and blockchain as the "nervous system" to automate underwriting, compliance, and loan verification through native data structures.

Previous Bernstein research estimated the addressable market for total annual credit origination volume at $4 trillion across multiple loan categories that could migrate onchain as tokenized assets. This scope includes mortgages, auto loans, home equity lines of credit, and small-business loans, segments where Figure is expanding beyond its core business. Despite this potential, tokenized credit remains a minor segment of the broader RWA market. Industry data shows the sector is currently valued at approximately $5.14 billion, highlighting a substantial gap between current adoption and the long-term growth opportunity outlined by analysts. Woofun AI analysis suggests that bridging this valuation gap requires solving the liquidity fragmentation issues that currently plague fractionalized asset markets.

Competitors are simultaneously experimenting with bringing credit onchain to capture this emerging volume. Centrifuge has expanded its decentralized finance platform to include tokenized credit and US Treasury products on new blockchain networks, aiming to connect institutional-grade assets with DeFi liquidity. Figure has also diversified into auto loans through the Hastra DeFi protocol, where tokenized credit products are engineered to integrate with decentralized finance and broader blockchain markets. Launched last year by the Provenance Blockchain Foundation, the Hastra protocol swaps wrapped yields for a Prime token. Recently, Hastra announced its launch on the Morpho protocol on Ethereum, opening access to a significantly larger addressable DeFi market and intensifying competition for liquidity in the tokenized credit sector.