In this insightful episode of the Crypto Trailblazers series hosted by theCUBE, Mike Cagney of Figure Markets sits down with analysts from theCUBE Research to discuss groundbreaking advancements in blockchain technology and their implications for the finance sector. This video is part of the NYSE Wired digital event, aimed at bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Wall Street by integrating technology and finance.
Cagney, an eminent figure in fintech, shares expertise on the transformative role of blockchain in financial markets during this interview. Conducted by seasoned analysts at theCUBE, the discussion delves into Figure’s innovative contributions, including their blockchain-native loan origination and securitization process. He outlines how Figure leverages blockchain to achieve cost reductions, enhanced security and improved liquidity in financial transactions.
Key takeaways from the interview highlight insights on the evolution of the Web3 ecosystem, such as the emergence of stablecoins as pivotal to transaction processes and the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi). Oltsik states these developments signify a shift towards democratizing finance, wherein truth and transparency are foundational. The conversation concludes with a look at Figure’s pioneering efforts in creating a new financial marketplace utilizing blockchain technology.
#CryptoTrailblazers #FigureMarkets #BlockchainInnovation #Web3 #NYEWired #BlockchainFinance #DecentralizedFinance #Fintech #Stablecoins
Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/.
Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/
Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/
00:00 - Intro
00:05 - Emerging Innovations in Financial Technology and Market Dynamics
02:45 - Key Elements in Financial Ecosystem Dynamics
06:20 - Blockchain: Truth and Transformation
09:39 - Shaping the Future: Innovations in Financial Markets and Stablecoin Integration
13:15 - Enabling the Future: Navigating Disruptions in Banking and Lending
16:51 - Exploring Opportunities and Building Confidence in the Blockchain Ecosystem
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Carlos Domingo, Securitize
In this insightful episode of the Crypto Trailblazers series hosted by theCUBE, Mike Cagney of Figure Markets sits down with analysts from theCUBE Research to discuss groundbreaking advancements in blockchain technology and their implications for the finance sector. This video is part of the NYSE Wired digital event, aimed at bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Wall Street by integrating technology and finance.
Cagney, an eminent figure in fintech, shares expertise on the transformative role of blockchain in financial markets during this interview. Conducted by seasoned analysts at theCUBE, the discussion delves into Figure’s innovative contributions, including their blockchain-native loan origination and securitization process. He outlines how Figure leverages blockchain to achieve cost reductions, enhanced security and improved liquidity in financial transactions.
Key takeaways from the interview highlight insights on the evolution of the Web3 ecosystem, such as the emergence of stablecoins as pivotal to transaction processes and the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi). Oltsik states these developments signify a shift towards democratizing finance, wherein truth and transparency are foundational. The conversation concludes with a look at Figure’s pioneering efforts in creating a new financial marketplace utilizing blockchain technology.
#CryptoTrailblazers #FigureMarkets #BlockchainInnovation #Web3 #NYEWired #BlockchainFinance #DecentralizedFinance #Fintech #Stablecoins
Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/.
Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/
Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/
00:00 - Intro
00:05 - Emerging Innovations in Financial Technology and Market Dynamics
02:45 - Key Elements in Financial Ecosystem Dynamics
06:20 - Blockchain: Truth and Transformation
09:39 - Shaping the Future: Innovations in Financial Markets and Stablecoin Integration
13:15 - Enabling the Future: Navigating Disruptions in Banking and Lending
16:51 - Exploring Opportunities and Building Confidence in the Blockchain Ecosystem
In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Crypto Trailblazers, Carlos Domingo, chief executive officer and co-founder of Securitize, joins theCUBE's John Furrier to discuss the mainstreaming of tokenized securities and the company's landmark partnership with the New York Stock Exchange. Domingo explains how Securitize was selected as the primary digital transfer agent for the NYSE's new digital trading venue — positioning it to issue tokenized stocks and serve as the first broker dealer enabling retail access to on-chain equities. He highlights how blockch...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is the NYSE announcing about a new digital trading venue for tokenized stocks, and what role will Securitize play in that effort?add
How does tokenizing traditional stocks work, and what role does a transfer agent/broker‑dealer play in enabling retail trading of tokenized equities?add
How do you envision the future of asset digitization and tokenization, and where will capital markets go as a result?add
What product was released with BlackRock (BUIDL) and why was it significant in the tokenized treasury/asset market?add
>> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE. NYSE studio, of course, we have our Palo Alto studio connecting Wall Street and Silicon Valley. I'm John Furrier, host of the cube. This is our Crypto Trailblazer series where we feature the leaders who are making it happen, and I'm excited by this interview. It's an old friend from 2018 CUBR alumni from The Bahamas and Puerto Rico back when crypto OGs we're making it happen. Carlos Domingo is the CEO and co-founder of Securitize. Big news coming out. We'll get into that. Carlos, great to see you.
Carlos Domingo
>> Great to see you again.
John Furrier
>> I'm so happy for you. We've known each other since 2018.
Carlos Domingo
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> We were grinding away, pushing the rock uphill.
Carlos Domingo
>> You've seen the journey.
John Furrier
>> Seen the journey. Just for the folks who don't know, Securitize, explain what you guys do because you have massive news with the NYSE on securitizing tokens and equity and all these things that are happening. Talk about what you do real quick. Set the table.
Carlos Domingo
>> We are a tokenization platform. We're the largest and the oldest tokenization platform as you know we started in 2018. But basically tokenization means taking securities, whether equities, bonds, funds, et cetera, and put them on blockchain rails to make them much more accessible, easier to trade, easier to serve, et cetera. So that's what tokenization is. And that's what we do as a company, provide that service to issuers of securities, asset managers, public literate companies, et cetera.
John Furrier
>> With the regime change in the United States and the international market developing before that, we're now seeing the mainstreaming of crypto. This has been the number one topic here in the NYSE. Obviously in California, you got a lot of protocol work being done. A lot of the chain, chains are stable. A lot more confidence is coming into securities being tokenized. Real world assets are coming in, real world and digital coming together. We're seeing that with companies like NVIDIA on the AI side, real world and digital. What is the importance? Well, first of all, what is the deal with the NYSE? Huge news that hit this week. What does that news and what does that mean?
Carlos Domingo
>> So NYSE has announced that they are going to launch a digital trading venue. So NYSE obviously has the existing stock exchange where things trade in traditional rails, right? Settle T+1. The securities are held through broker intermediaries to broker dealers, et cetera. So they've announced recently that they're launching a digital trading venue where tokenized stocks will trade.
And what we announced yesterday is that NYSE has chosen Securitize as the main digital transfer agent, which is the regular entity that basically issues securities in tokenized form to be able to trade on the New York Stock Exchange digital platform. And we're also going to be the design partner to figure out how to make this happen, as well as the first broker dealer that will be able to connect to allow retail people to trade tokens that represent equity in companies.
John Furrier
>> I love this because I think this is a domino that falls and other ones will fall behind it. This speaks to the real time, the mainstream of crypto infrastructure. Explain how it works for the folks watching. People buy stocks all the time.
Carlos Domingo
>> Sure.
John Furrier
>> Explain how it works and what you guys do as that agent, transfer agent.
Carlos Domingo
>> So people buy stocks all the time, but people don't realize that in reality, they don't really own the stock. So then when they click on the bottom and it says you purchase Apple shares, you actually don't really own the Apple shares yet because they sell T+1. They are also, what you get is the entitlement, but not the actual stock. So if you want to conduct a proxy vote because you need to vote for something or you want to get a dividend, there is so many inefficiencies that we are abstracting out through a UI, but they exist underneath as well as intermediaries. So when you tokenize the stock, you're basically freeing it from this legacy infrastructure. You put in on a blockchain, you have self-custody of your own securities. You can move them more efficiently. You can trade them 24/7. You can sell instantly. You can use them to borrow against them, et cetera. So it kind of opens up being able to consume those securities in a much more efficient way and access a much more functionality around the securities than before.
John Furrier
>> So it's more efficient.
Carlos Domingo
>> It's more efficient and more things that you can do with them.
John Furrier
>> And so I hold that custody of the token.
Carlos Domingo
>> Correct. You will hold the token on your own wallet and that token represents, let's say, equity on NVIDIA or equity on Apple or equity on Uber.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, one of the things we've been hearing is so many ideas and use cases. Take us through the progression. Okay. Equities today, Apple, NVIDIA, stocks that people buy in retail, I get that. There's other stock. There's private stock in companies.
Carlos Domingo
>> 100%.
John Furrier
>> There's other products that could come out of this wave. What's your vision of where this goes?
Carlos Domingo
>> Look, our vision is ultimately everything gets tokenized because everything gets digitized. If you think about, for instance, music, it kind of started with compact this where you have MP3 files and then you got the MP3 players and then you got downloads and then streaming. And then now everything is digital. Nobody goes and buys physical music anymore. Maybe a residual 1%.
So capital markets are going to get digitized natively on blockchains. That's unavoidable. Now the problem is we are in a very long journey. This is not going to happen overnight, but we're starting seeing it with public equities, with treasuries that we were very successfully tokenized with BlackRock, with private credit that we've done with Hamilton Lane or Apollo, with bonds that we've done with BNY. So there's many asset classes that lend itself well to tokenization that we're already tackling.
John Furrier
>> Can you share the just market opportunity for distributed assets? Because this is what's happening.
Carlos Domingo
>> Yeah. So look, yesterday, Chairman Paul Atkins from the SEC, he said something on an interview that kind of resonated very well with me. He said, "We are at the end of the beginning." So that is where it feels we are. We are at the end of the beginning. This is the beginning that is ending now. We have, let's say, tens of billions of dollars of tokenized assets. I think this industry has the potential of getting into the trillions of dollars because if you look at the size of capital markets, you're looking at tens of trillions of dollars. So we're just scratching the surface of what can be tokenized. And as Chairman Atkins said, we are at the end of the beginning. So the journey starts after.
John Furrier
>> What other deals have you guys done? Share some of the momentum. Obviously this is a huge milestone. Again, I think it's going to open up product opportunities of financial price we've never seen before. Certainly the custody piece, the settlement happening that way is great. But what other things do you see as product opportunities? What momentum do you have? Other deals?
Carlos Domingo
>> The one that we're known for is for tokenizing treasuries fund with BlackRock. BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world. We released a product in March 2024 called BUIDL, which became the largest tokenized asset in the industry. It's over $2 billion, the fastest growing and the largest, and it still is the largest in the industry. In traditional finance, people use treasuries instead of dollars for posting collateral, for managing your reserves, for backing other assets, et cetera. In crypto, they really didn't exist tokenized treasuries at scale. People were using stable coins, which are tokenized dollars. So I think BlackRock identified this opportunity of getting into the tokenized treasury space, which was very small. And now it's become the largest tokenized asset class after dollars.
John Furrier
>> Well, I want to congratulate you and your team. I know that this was always been your north star when I first interviewed you in 2018. It's happening in reality. So congratulations for that. Thank you. Really proud of the team and congratulations. The question that most people will ask if you think about the mainstream, and I get this a lot. "Oh, tokens. What is this crypto thing?" That's almost verbatim. So what does that mean from a tokenization standpoint? How should people understand the reality of this market? Can you give some examples? Because this is happening very fast and the institutions are getting behind. You mentioned BlackRock, the NYSE, retail investors. It's moving superfast. What does this mean to the average personnel who's trying to understand crypto beyond the price of Bitcoin and the price of Ethereum and Solana, et cetera? This is infrastructure.
Carlos Domingo
>> This is infrastructures and these are securities. So what you're getting with tokenized assets, you're getting a real world asset as the crypto people said, not like a digital asset that maybe doesn't have any intrinsic value. So I think that for the opportunity of people that they need to think about it is that today, there is hundreds of millions of people with digital wallets. And then when all these assets get tokenized, then these people get to access investment products that are difficult to be accessible by the everyday people today. You mentioned that people buy equities already, but that's actually not really true outside the US. I'm European and I can tell you most people don't trade equities there, but most people do trade crypto. So I think that this opens up access to financial services products for the everyday people in a way that we haven't seen before.
John Furrier
>> What is an example of why securities are better with tokenization? You get asked that question a lot, I'm sure, but what would you say? What efficiencies, what value?
Carlos Domingo
>> It's not just efficiencies. I think that if it was only an efficiency play, I would think it's less interesting that if it's also creating better products. So of course it's more efficient. I'll give you an example of what we do with BlackRock. In BlackRock tokenized treasury fund, you can transfer it peer-to-peer. I can hold a token. I'm an approved investor with a wallet and you're another approved investor with a wallet. I can send you the security instantly and sell the move of the security on chain 24/7. That's an efficiency, right? Because before you had to send it through a transfer agent, it will take two days, et cetera. Now, but other things we do is, for instance, we pay dividends on a daily basis without just basically one blockchain transaction, which means your asset actually accrues more value over time because every time we pay a dividend, your asset is bigger. So the next yield is on a bigger asset. So you're actually compounding the asset.
John Furrier
>> So there's real money being made.
Carlos Domingo
>> Correct. So it's not just actually the fact that you can provide efficiency to how the asset moves or how the asset is consumed. It's also that you can actually make the assets better. You can, for instance, today, if you hold a million dollars of Apple shares on your Robinhood account, it's very difficult to borrow against it. They give you a margin loan to trade, but not to buy a house. And if you want to borrow against equities, it's a very difficult process. Today, when you tokenize equities, you can basically post it on DeFi protocols and borrow against them in a very simple way and get a loan to buy a house in seconds, so.
John Furrier
>> That's a real value to the user.
Carlos Domingo
>> That's a real value to the end user that is going to be manifesting through tokenization.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, one of the things I love about this market is that these new opportunities come up that are not well-known. I'm glad you pointed that out. The other conversation is these private markets. There's kind of a lot of liquidity going on in these later rounds. So it's kind of a quasi-public market. That's my words. I don't think anyone is saying that.
Carlos Domingo
>> True, true, true. I think that private markets are the new public markets in the sense that companies wait so long to go public, which by the way, I think is a mistake in my opinion. We're going public now as you know, and we're not a very big company, but I think we should go public as soon as we can because it's a good thing for a company. But most companies prefer to stay private for as long as they can. And then they become so big that then there is a lot of trading on secondary of these private shares that they kind of behave a little bit like public shares.
John Furrier
>> It's exactly the problem you point out, the transfer agent that you guys solve. A lot of the same mechanics, not exactly the same, but an SPV gets set up, put the shares in there, early employees want to sell in the later round. So there's a lot of mechanics that could be tokenized.
Carlos Domingo
>> A lot of inefficient.
John Furrier
>> You could say, "Hey, here's your stock options."
Carlos Domingo
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> "Here's your equity private employee of a private company." As it goes up in value, you can tokenize it and get value out of it.
Carlos Domingo
>> 100%. And you could also get better secondary markets because trading in tokenized form is more efficient, right? You can trade against the stable coins with this and settlement that leads to maybe better price discovery for how people are trading on world price, et cetera.
John Furrier
>> So this is a great example of real world assets on chain. Equity is an asset.
Carlos Domingo
>> Equity is one of the largest asset classes in the world.
John Furrier
>> Where does it stop? Because I can see this continuing into private assets. Do you guys look at that or is that outside the scope of what you guys want to do or?
Carlos Domingo
>> No, we do have a lot of the assets we have, like let's say the funds that we have with BlackRock or with Apollo, with Hamilton Lane or these are private assets, right? Credit is a private asset, private credit, and we've been very successful tokenizing private credit. So yes, we are looking at both public assets and private assets with trying to solve different problems, but looking at both categories.
John Furrier
>> One question I want to ask you is, and I get this question a lot, so I'll ask you it since you're an expert in OG in crypto. What's the biggest change that's accelerating the tokenization of securities and assets? How would you answer that question? Is it the climate? Is it the policies? Is it the entrepreneurial zeal? What is the big change that's accelerating the financial infrastructure?
Carlos Domingo
>> I think today, if I see what has been the biggest, let's say the last eight, 12 to 18 months, what has been the biggest driver for acceleration has been two things. One, institutions coming into the space and validating it, BlackRock, New York Stock Exchange, et cetera. And the second one is the regulatory clarity that we're getting from the new administration. That combination of those two things is what is making the space flow.
John Furrier
>> The enthusiasms there and the confidence comes in through regulatory
Carlos Domingo
>> Regulatory clarity plus large established players endorsing the space.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. Hardened products.
Carlos Domingo
>> Correct.
John Furrier
>> Speak to that. Now we're at a level now where the players are developing and continuing to develop products.
Carlos Domingo
>> Oh yeah, every single major financial institution today, it's either already tokenizing or looking at tokenized. Every single one.
John Furrier
>> I was talking to a friend the other day and he's asked about crypto. I go, look, remember the Apple Store, SaaS apps would go in there and you'd download and you'd pay and Apple would take a little commission?
Carlos Domingo
>> Still do it by the way.
John Furrier
>> Marketplace. I love marketplaces. But you could almost think of your iPhone. We have Apple Pay. I can throw once a while it gets in the phone.
Carlos Domingo
>> Correct.
John Furrier
>> It's game over. Then it's all electronic anyway. This brings in kind of the user experience that's understandable. What's behind the scenes? Because now if that happens and it will, Securitize is there, the platforms are there. There's a whole nother set of plumbing and infrastructure and software powering that. That's what you guys are doing.
Carlos Domingo
>> Many years ago, we used to do a demo to explain to potential customers and investors what the future of the industry could be. And we actually did a demo very similar to what you described. Imagine the power of tokenization that you could have on your phone, you have digital assets, say stable coins with a wallet and you have Apple Pay so you can just pay. You could walk into, let's say, your favorite restaurant and instead of tipping, you could just go through a QR code, access, purchase a 0.001% of that restaurant in the form some tokens or percent equity on the restaurant, then now you're an owner. For the restaurant, it means it's raising money and it's also creating a very loyal customer because now the customer is also a part-time owner of the place. And that's something that is the long tail of tokenization, but eventually it's going to come.
John Furrier
>> Ownership is a constant theme in all crypto store value.
Carlos Domingo
>> Imagine that when you bought the first iPhone 10 years ago, whenever the iPhone started, if you had the ability to just buy some Apple stock at the same time-
John Furrier
>> We'd all be rich.
Carlos Domingo
>> And then we'll all be rich. And the same thing with Amazon. If every time you purchase Amazon books back when they started, you had the opportunity to just purchase a very small amount of equity as part of your purchase, then people will be rich today. So that's kind of like the vision of how the future is going to be.
John Furrier
>> Well, it's super exciting to see sunny skies and a tailwind in crypto infrastructure. A lot of entrepreneurs are working hard. A lot more entrepreneurs are coming in. The application market is probably going to boom once the Clarity Act gets solid. So I have to ask you about your IPO, what your plans are. You going to go public? What's on your agenda? What are you focused on? What are you optimizing for?
Carlos Domingo
>> So listen, we decided to go public at the end of last year through the merge with SPAC. It's a Cantor Fitzgerald-sponsored SPAC. It's counter equity partners too, CPTs, the ticket. And then the reason we wanted to do that is because first we felt that for a company like us that works with very large institutions, being publicly traded give us the kind of like the endorsement of public markets and the credibility that these players expect from their counterparties. It obviously is a way to get a bigger balance sheet so the company is going to stay in business for the foreseeable future, be more transparent about our financials and get our brand out there. So we're now in the final stages of the final SEC approval of our S4. We filed publicly the S4 already and we are now refiling with the 2025 audited financials. And hopefully as soon as we do that filing and we get the S4 effective, we'll go public in the near future. So very excited about it.
John Furrier
>> How about on the product side? Any lines aside on the roadmap? Can you share?
Carlos Domingo
>> The things are working a lot. Recently, we've done some announcements besides obviously the public equity tokenization that we announced yesterday with New York Stock Exchange. I do believe that DeFi and RWAs are converging and that those two worlds are coming together where the DeFi infrastructure that has been built for digital assets is going to be deployed into tokenized assets and RWAs. And I think that how to marry those two worlds, that one is completely, let's say, permissionless and anonymous and unregulated with the regulatory nature of RWAs is something we've been thinking very hard and working and done some announcement and integrations recently, but I think there is a lot of room to grow that business yet.
John Furrier
>> Well, Carlos, congratulations. It's great to see you.
Carlos Domingo
>> Good to see you again.
John Furrier
>> Coming on our Crypto Trailblazer. It's our Crypto Trailblazer.
Carlos Domingo
>> Don't wait another eight years.
John Furrier
>> I had black hair on the last time you saw me. Brian Baumann at the NYSE always jokes. It's been 17 years with theCUBE. This is the Crypto Trailblazer with the leaders who are bringing the technology and the business models to the financial mainstreaming of crypto infrastructure that'll usher in the real world assets on chain with the physical world, very consistent theme, and it's the same rhymes with AI as well. So that's all coming together. We've got you covered here in theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here at the NYSE Wired Program at CUBE Original here at the New York Stock Exchange.
John Furrier