The Situation

Figure has launched a proposed secondary offering of up to 4.23M shares of its Series A Blockchain Common Stock—a deliberately structured test of whether equity secondary trading can move onto blockchain rails without relying on the full legacy broker-clearing stack. [PYMNTS] [Blockmanity]

This is not “tokenized public equities” in the synthetic/derivative sense; it’s an issuer building an issuer-controlled on-chain share class and trying to make the cap table + transfer + settlement loop behave more like a digital asset. The timing matters: we just covered LSEG stepping into the post-trade control plane—Figure is coming from the opposite direction (issuer/marketplace), and the overlap is the same battleground: who becomes the system-of-record for ownership and settlement finality.

The Mechanism

• Issuer-sponsored security token, not a venue-sponsored wrapper: Figure is effectively saying “the share is the ledger object,” with the issuer (and its agent stack) defining transfer rules—closer to Securitize-style control layers than exchange/CSD primacy.
• Secondary sale as a liquidity bootstrap: by using a secondary offering format, Figure can seed an initial float and attempt to create tradable supply without waiting for broader market plumbing (prime, CCP netting, omnibus custody) to fully adapt.
• Settlement proposition is the product: the headline is “on-chain trading,” but the real wedge is shortening settlement cycles and reducing reconciliation between broker, transfer agent, and custodian—i.e., collapsing roles into a smaller operational graph.
• Counterparty risk shifts from broker/clearing to admin/permissioning: the critical dependency becomes the token admin stack (transfer restrictions, whitelists, corporate actions processing), plus whatever custody/wallet model approved holders use.
• Distribution constraint is the gating function: if transfers are permissioned (likely, given securities constraints), liquidity will hinge on who can be whitelisted and how quickly; this is the same “permissioned asset + public rails (selectively)” pattern we flagged with BUIDL on Uniswap, but now applied to equity.
• Second-order pressure on post-trade incumbents: if issuer-led cap table + settlement works at small scale, it challenges the assumption that equities must route through the full DTCC-style stack for every non-exchange transfer—especially for private/pre-IPO equities and secondary programs.

The State of Play

Market Position
Figure is attempting to own the full vertical slice: issuance format, transfer logic, and a marketplace narrative around “blockchain stock.” That contrasts with the direction of travel from incumbents like LSEG, which is building a depository/settlement wrapper intended to sit neutral across issuers and chains. The competition is less “who has the best chain” and more “where do institutions plug in once” to get standardized onboarding, safekeeping, and operational certainty.

Regulatory Landscape
This lives or dies on whether Figure can keep the instrument clearly inside a compliant securities perimeter: registered offering mechanics, enforceable transfer restrictions, and clean mappings between on-chain holdings and the legal cap table. The regulatory signal to watch isn’t broad “crypto policy”—it’s the SEC’s posture on on-chain transfer agents, digital share records, and what constitutes acceptable settlement finality when the ledger is not the traditional CSD record.

Key Data

• Up to 4.23M shares in the proposed secondary offering of Series A Blockchain Common Stock. [PYMNTS]
• Instrument is explicitly branded as “Blockchain Common Stock” (i.e., a distinct share class/format rather than a tokenized receipt). [PYMNTS]
• Figure previously disclosed it had filed a registration statement with the SEC (referenced by Figure in prior communications, per PYMNTS). [PYMNTS]
• Transaction type: secondary public offering (structure choice matters for float creation and early liquidity dynamics). [PYMNTS]

What’s Next

The immediate catalyst is whether Figure can translate “blockchain stock” into repeatable market access: who is eligible to hold it, what custody/wallet rails are supported, and how corporate actions + transfer restrictions are administered at scale. If institutions can onboard without bespoke legal/ops work—and if the secondary market shows credible continuity of liquidity—this becomes a live test case for whether equity settlement can be pulled toward issuer-led on-chain records, or whether the center of gravity remains with exchange groups and depositories building neutral settlement layers.

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