Figure launches FGRD as SEC-registered onchain public stock

Figure Markets says it has launched FGRD, which it describes as the first “SEC-registered onchain public stock,” an experiment that tries to fuse familiar U.S. securities plumbing with crypto-style token rails. According to Bitcoin.com News, the company frames the product as a milestone for bringing regulated equities onto a blockchain, with ownership recorded onchain rather than solely inside legacy broker and transfer-agent databases.

The headline claim—“SEC-registered”—is doing a lot of work. Registration can apply to the security itself, but it does not automatically mean the entire lifecycle is suddenly decentralized. The U.S. securities stack is a bundle of roles and liabilities: issuer, broker-dealer, exchange/ATS, transfer agent, clearinghouse, custodian, and the web of AML/KYC and recordkeeping obligations. Putting a cap table on a blockchain can reduce reconciliation friction, but it doesn’t repeal the need for gatekeepers who decide who can hold the asset, who can trade it, and under what conditions.

The interesting question is what, exactly, is “onchain” here: the share, a token representing the share, or a book-entry record that remains anchored to a conventional issuer/transfer-agent framework. If the token is merely a new wrapper, then disintermediation is mostly cosmetic—like replacing a paper receipt with a QR code while keeping the bouncer at the door.

Counterparty risk doesn’t vanish; it migrates. Traditional markets concentrate settlement risk in clearinghouses and central counterparties (CCPs), which net exposures and impose margin rules—an architecture designed after repeated episodes of human optimism colliding with leverage. Onchain settlement can, in theory, shorten settlement cycles and reduce some clearing frictions, but it also shifts operational and governance risk to smart-contract code, key management, and whatever entity controls the permissioning layer.

The more an “onchain stock” aims to be compliant, the more it tends to reintroduce centralized chokepoints—whitelists, transfer restrictions, upgradeable contracts, and administrator keys. That may be prudent, but it’s not the cypherpunk dream; it’s Wall Street with different middleware.

Still, entrepreneurs are right to probe the boundary between securities law and crypto infrastructure. If Figure’s approach holds up under real trading volume, corporate actions, and stress events, it could demonstrate a path to faster settlement and simpler recordkeeping without asking regulators to pretend that investor protection is a vibes-based protocol. The SEC’s real test will come later: when something breaks and everyone involved discovers what “registered” does—and does not—mean when the ledger is a smart contract.