Journalist

Hassan Shittu

Journalist

Hassan Shittu

About Author

Hassan, a Cryptonews.com journalist with 6+ years of experience in Web3 journalism, brings deep knowledge across Crypto, Web3 Gaming, NFTs, and Play-to-Earn sectors. His work has appeared in…

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September 2, 2025

Blockchain-based lender Figure Technology Solutions Inc. is preparing to go public this month in one of the most closely watched listings in the crypto-fintech sector.

The company and its backers are seeking to raise up to $526 million through an initial public offering, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to a Bloomberg report, Figure plans to sell 21.5 million shares priced between $18 and $20 each, while existing shareholders are offering an additional 4.9 million shares. At the top of that range, the firm would command a market capitalization of $4.13 billion, surpassing its $3.2 billion valuation from a 2021 venture round.

The company is expected to price its shares on September 10, with trading set to begin on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol FIGR. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Bank of America are leading the offering.

Figure IPO Follows Strong Revenue Growth and Blockchain Expansion

Founded in 2018 by Mike Cagney, the former chief executive of SoFi Technologies, Figure has positioned itself as a developer of blockchain-based solutions to streamline consumer lending.

The firm began with home equity line of credit (HELOC) products and has since expanded into crypto-backed loans and a digital asset exchange.

To date, it has originated or purchased more than $16 billion in loans on-chain. In August, the company increased its HELOC borrowing limit from $400,000 to $750,000 to capture a larger share of equity-rich homeowners.

Figure has also moved into artificial intelligence, using OpenAI’s technology to evaluate loan applications and Google’s Gemini chatbot to improve customer interactions.

According to its filing, customers for partner-branded HELOC loans in the first half of 2025 had a weighted average FICO score of 756, slightly higher than the 749 average for its own-branded loans.

The company’s growth trajectory has accelerated in 2025. For the six months ending June 30, Figure reported a net income of $29.1 million on revenue of $190.6 million, compared with a net loss of $15.6 million on $156 million in revenue during the same period last year.

Investors include Apollo Global Management, 10T Holdings, and Ribbit Capital. Despite the IPO, Cagney will continue to control a majority of the voting power, the filing shows.

Michael Tannenbaum, formerly with Brex and SoFi, was appointed CEO in 2024, tasked with guiding the company’s public market debut and scaling its blockchain-based lending products.

Beyond lending, Figure is pursuing regulatory approval for what it says could be the first U.S.-approved interest-bearing stablecoin structured as a security.

Figure’s offering follows a series of confidential filings earlier this year, with the company formally submitting its registration in mid-August.

Marketing presentations to investors emphasize its ability to pair blockchain efficiency with traditional financial rigor, noting cost reductions in loan origination and securitization.

In addition to loan products, Figure recently rolled out its Intellidebt solution, which has already helped customers pay off $133 million in debt by consolidating credit cards, auto loans, and personal loans into single payment structures.

Crypto IPO Rush Accelerates as Gemini and Circle Join Wall Street Frenzy

Crypto-linked companies are racing to public markets this fall, capitalizing on renewed investor appetite and favorable conditions in the U.S.

According to recent filings, Gemini Space Station, the parent of crypto exchange Gemini, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is seeking up to a $2.22 billion valuation in its Nasdaq debut.

The New York-based firm plans to sell 16.67 million Class A shares at $17 to $19 each, potentially raising $317 million. Shares will trade under the ticker GEMI, with underwriters granted an option to buy an additional 2.5 million shares.

Ripple has backed Gemini’s listing with a $75 million credit facility, expandable to $150 million.

The surge in activity comes after Circle Internet Group’s successful market debut earlier this year, which more than doubled its value. It now boasts a $30 billion market cap.

The strong performance has fueled optimism that 2025 could mark a turning point for digital asset firms after years of regulatory and market headwinds.

Wall Street banks are fielding heightened demand from technology and crypto issuers. Goldman Sachs’ co-head of equity capital markets, Will Connolly, said firms are accelerating timelines, with some originally targeting 2026, now asking to move forward this year.

JPMorgan’s Keith Canton projects that dozens of IPOs could close before year-end, raising more than $15 billion.

Beyond traditional listings, crypto-focused special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are also entering the fray. Bitcoin Infrastructure Acquisition Corp., a Cayman Islands-based blank-check firm, filed to raise $200 million to target Web3, DeFi, and blockchain finance companies, listing on Nasdaq under the ticker BIXIU.

Other listings include Bullish, a Peter Thiel-backed exchange that raised $1.15 billion in its NYSE debut, entirely in stablecoins. Bullish joined Coinbase and Circle among the best-performing crypto IPOs of 2025, with Circle and CoreWeave delivering 336% and 132% returns, respectively.

With supportive policy shifts under the Trump administration and a buoyant risk environment, crypto IPOs are gaining momentum as firms rush to secure market share before year-end.

So, as I have mentioned, I haven’t been blogging much lately, because I have been so busy with my full-time paying job as an academic librarian at my employer, the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Now that the annual rush of training hundreds of students on how to use the university libraries effectively and efficiently has ended, my attention turns to my other big project: specifying hardware and software for a virtual reality lab, which we are calling the XR Lab (the XR stands for eXtended Reality, a sort of umbrella term used for virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and what Apple is now calling spatial computing).

The purpose of this lab is to provide virtual reality and augmented reality hardware and software (both VR/AR experiences and content creation tools) to University of Manitoba faculty, staff, and students to support their teaching, learning and research. I have been working on this project for the past two and half years, and it is a weird feeling to finally see the computers removed from the room which we have designated as the future home of the XR Lab, in preparation for the necessary room renovations (which are to start soon, and are supposed to be completed by spring next year):

In the meantime, I have been cross-training another Libraries staff member on the hardware and software which I am proposing for the XR Lab. In other words, if (God forbid!) I should get run over by a bus, the idea is that somebody will be able to give VR/AR demos in my place. There is a lot of information which has to be shared! For example, our last training session included a section on how to set the correct interpupillary distance (IPD) on both the Vive Pro 2 and Meta Quest 3 headsets (thankfully, the Apple Vision Pro automatically scans your eyes and sets the IPD automatically!).

There’s a lot of balls to juggle, and I must confess that I often feel exhausted and even overwhelmed at times. When I come home from work, the last thing I want to do is write a blog post! So my formerly feverish blogging pace has unfortunately slowed to a crawl. Also, my blogpost viewing stats are way, waaay down. Where I used to get 1,500 views a day, now I’m lucky to reach even one third of that:

Partly it’s because the metaverse hype cycle has crested and crashed (and everyone has jumped on the artificial intelligence bandwagon), and partly it’s because longform blogs seem to be an increasingly outdated—even quaint—means of communication in the current short-attention-span era of Instagram pictures and TikTok videos.

Which means I seriously need to pause and think about what direction in which I want to take this blog, and who I want my audience to be. One of the things that I have always said is that, in a blog that literally has my name in the URL, anything I want to talk about here is on topic! However, I am wondering if perhaps I have cast my net a little too broadly, and it might be time to narrow the focus of the RyanSchultz.com blog somewhat.

I don’t think that I will cease blogging completely; I still feel the need to write, but I need to reflect a bit on what I want to write about, and why. I still do get a sense of accomplishment when I craft a well-written blog post on a topic that I care about and, as always, I read and appreciate all the comments and feedback I receive on my blogposts!

So please bear with me as I figure out where I am going next with (gestures broadly) all this.

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