Milk Road · Nov 3, 2026 · 44m · 34m saved
With Mike Cagney, Co-Founder and CEO of Navra, Executive Chairman of Figure and Co-Founder of SoFi
Photo via navra.com
Figure moves more than $2.5 billion of loans onto a blockchain every month, and Mike Cagney, co-founder of SoFi and Figure and now CEO of Navra, told Milk Road that if those assets stayed there they would drain every dollar of lending capacity in decentralized finance (DeFi) in about three months. Most of Wall Street still treats DeFi as a crypto sideshow. Mike's view is that the $6 trillion asset-based finance market should run on it, and that the pools are simply too small for now.
"If we leave those on chain, you know, we'll exhaust the entire available DeFi pool in, you know, three months." — Mike Cagney
Mike co-founded SoFi and then Figure, which is now the largest non-bank lender in home equity lines of credit and sells through more than 400 origination partners. He spun out Navra to sell the same plumbing to institutions.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 44 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Figure would exhaust all available DeFi liquidity in about three months if it left its loans on-chain
A traditional mortgage now costs over $11,000 to originate, against under $1,000 for a Figure HELOC
Blockchain stops the double-pledging of collateral behind the last four big credit events in asset-based finance
Navra's "keyless" custody lets a qualified custodian control an asset without holding it
50 of the original 62 companies have opted out of tokenized stock venues, which Mike says give worse execution
Brokerages hide how much they earn from stock lending because it is "obscenely profitable"
Credit funds that ignore DeFi are leaving an edge to competitors, Mike says
1. Figure's Blockchain Edge
John Gillen, who hosts Milk Road, opened on Figure's reported "rule of 40" score of 150, a measure that adds revenue growth to profit margin. Figure says only Nvidia and Micron score higher in the S&P 500. Mike credited three uses of blockchain inside the business.
Mike says blockchain cuts out the lender that sits in the middle of warehouse financing
"We use the immutability of the ledger to reduce the friction around transactions... and we use DeFi, and DeFi is an integral part of what we're doing." — Mike Cagney
The ledger lowers transaction costs, Figure's own marketplaces settle trades between two parties directly, and DeFi replaces a capital allocator such as Goldman Sachs that would otherwise charge roughly SOFR plus 250 basis points to fund the loans. Mike called the trade "Pareto optimal" because the borrower pays less and the investor earns more.
Mike blames double-pledged collateral for the last four big credit blowups in asset-based finance
"The last four major credit events we've had in asset-based finance have all been through fraud, through people double pledging assets... blockchain eliminates that ability." — Mike Cagney
A loan recorded on a shared ledger cannot be pledged to a second lender without the first one seeing it.
