Pantera Capital Partner: How Tokenization is Restructuring the Private Equity and Early Investment Ecosystem?

Author: Jay Yu

Compiled by: Jiahua, ChainCatcher

For the fastest-growing tech companies globally, the public market is no longer what it used to be. Thirty years ago, Amazon went public three years after its founding, with a valuation of $438 million. Netscape conducted its initial public offering just eighteen months after its establishment.

But today, the fastest-growing companies (Stripe, SpaceX, OpenAI, Ramp) typically remain private for over a decade. The high-growth exposure that investors once easily accessed in the public market has now been quietly captured by private capital, which continually pushes up valuations.

"If we were to be cynical, [venture capital] has hijacked the growth phase of early public companies. Amazon went public when its market cap was less than a billion dollars. Today, that’s almost unimaginable." ------ Bill Gurley

The market has made some temporary patchwork responses: special purpose vehicles (SPVs), secondary market platforms, tender offers, and other tools aimed at satisfying investors' appetite for growth-stage risk assets. But these are merely patches, not fundamental solutions.

What investors truly desire may be the vision that tech companies' public listings carried thirty years ago: to gain broad and liquid investment exposure to epoch-defining companies and share in venture-level massive returns.

Tokenized risk assets may be part of the answer. This article explores how tokenized startups can rebalance these disconnected markets around three questions:

(1) Why is now the right time for the development of tokenized startups?

(2) What is the landscape of tokenized startups?

(3) What are the key opportunities, challenges, and unresolved contradictions hindering the scaling of this field?

Part One: Why is it the right time for tokenized startups?

Tokenized startups are at the intersection of three major trends:

(1) The explosive growth of temporary tools like SPVs as the de facto liquidity mechanism for epoch-defining tech companies.

(2) The rapid growth of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), covering areas such as money markets, public stocks, and commodities.

(3) The fracture of the "token versus equity" consensus, where project tokens are increasingly relegated to second-class status compared to venture equity investments.

1.1 The Rise of SPVs

Ten years ago, SPVs were a niche tool, a way to pool funds outside traditional venture capital or public financing structures. But in the past two years, they have become a key part of capital strategy, with platforms like AngelList, Carta, and Assure making it unprecedentedly simple to set up SPVs for specific opportunities and companies.

In particular, secondary market SPVs have grown by over 545% in the past two years, with fundraising increasing more than tenfold. These temporary market structures have captured significant market growth: the weighted basket of the top 50 secondary market assets on Hiive achieved a 49.1% growth in 2025, significantly outperforming the S&P 500 index.

This indicates that investors are using temporary private market structures to restore the functions that the public market once performed more smoothly: access, liquidity, and price discovery. As companies remain private for longer, SPVs have become one of the main alternatives.

1.2 RWAs, Tokenization, and Perpetualization

The second trend is the rise of tokenization across various asset classes and perpetual markets.

In the first quarter of 2026, the on-chain value of RWAs reached approximately $320 billion. While the largest RWA asset class remains U.S. Treasury bonds (which can serve as collateral for stablecoins), significant growth has also been seen in asset classes such as commodities, stocks, and asset-backed credit (like Figure's home equity loans).

As RWAs gain adoption, we can see the tokenization supply chain maturing: covering all aspects from issuers and custodians to regulatory frameworks.

Meanwhile, with the rise of perpetual decentralized exchanges (perp-DEXes) like Hyperliquid, perpetual futures have also seen significant growth in the past two years. Unlike derivatives with expiration dates, perpetual futures have no expiration date, which offers practical execution advantages, is easier to understand from a risk perspective, and natively supports round-the-clock trading.

Projects like TradeXYZ have also extended perpetual futures to other asset classes beyond pure cryptocurrency trading pairs (like BTC-USDC), including U.S. and Korean stocks, commodities, and stock indices, combining HIP-3 to provide a standardized approach to creating new perpetual markets.

1.3 The Fracture of the "Token versus Equity" Consensus

The third growing trend is the value capture dilemma between tokens and equity.

Tokens from decentralized finance projects like UNI and AAVE explicitly stated at issuance that they do not represent equity to address regulatory concerns. This created a "token versus equity consensus," where project tokens should serve as synthetic tools, granting owners "governance rights" over parts of the protocol and promising to capture fees as a means of value capture.

However, this has created a dual system where value capture is a zero-sum game, and token holders become second-class citizens compared to equity holders.

This issue has become clearer in recent events, such as the confrontation between Aave DAO and Labs, and the controversial Circle acquisition of Axelar, where the interests of token holders were subordinate to equity interests.

All of this has prompted a rethinking of the existing "token versus equity consensus": how do we design tokens that better reflect the upside potential of projects?

The intersection of these three trends may pave the way for the rise of "tokenized startups": providing tokenized investment exposure to companies with venture-scale upside potential, allowing the general public to access epoch-defining companies early, just as they did in the past in the public market.

In this way, tokens become a restructured mechanism for traditional IPOs, allowing a broader public to access the hottest giant companies.

Part Two: The Landscape of Tokenized Startups

2.1 Current Design Approaches and Trading Volumes

Today, tokenized startups have a variety of approaches and designs across two main dimensions: investment mechanisms and startup stages.

The investment mechanisms of tokenized startups range from SPV tools that hold equity (like PreStocks), closed-end funds that provide pathways to company equity (like Robinhood Ventures), to pure perpetual futures that only offer price exposure without underlying equity ownership (like TradeXYZ and Ventuals).

The stages of startups range from early companies (like the platform of MetaDAO) to growth-stage assets and well-known pre-IPO companies (like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI).

By sorting the major players in this field and their scale (24-hour trading volume as of May 30), we notice several clear patterns.

First, the largest trend is that trading volumes on late-stage platforms (especially pre-IPO startups) are over ten times higher than those in early stages. Notably, regardless of which platform these assets are provided on, users seem to prefer investing in well-known companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, Anduril, and OpenAI.

Second, trading volumes for equity-based tokenized startups (such as through Robinhood Ventures and PreStocks) are generally higher than their corresponding perpetual contract platforms. Part of the reason may simply be due to Robinhood's distribution advantage as a platform and TradeXYZ's conservative strategy of rolling out perpetual contracts one by one.

It is worth noting that TradeXYZ's perpetual contract for Cerebras Systems has achieved significant success, with daily trading volumes exceeding $30 million and providing accurate price discovery within a margin of less than 3% from the issue price.

Third, in this landscape, all platforms exhibit a strong power-law concentration effect, with trading volumes often dominated by fewer than three assets. For example, MetaDAO's trading volume is dominated by META, Avici, and Umbra; Street's trading volume is dominated by KLED.

Currently (as of May 30, 2026), TradeXYZ only offers trading pairs related to SpaceX, which also accounts for about half of PreStock's weekly trading volume. This significant power-law effect may indicate that, for most platforms, traders are more loyal to high-quality assets with high recognition rather than the underlying platform itself.

2.2 Project Design Architecture

We can also delve into individual projects within this landscape to carefully understand the trade-offs of various design schemes in the field, from perpetual contract exposure to SPV-supported equity structures.

Note: The platform comparisons and feature descriptions in this analysis represent the author's views based on publicly available information as of May 30, 2026. Descriptions of platform advantages and disadvantages do not constitute investment advice.

Part Three: Challenges and Opportunities Facing Tokenized Startups

Today, tokenized startups are still in their infancy, and their design space is filled with numerous opportunities and challenges.

3.1 Equity Transfer Consent and Team Interest Alignment

Currently, one of the most pressing issues for spot tokenized startup platforms is whether these projects align with or contradict the interests of the founding team, especially when platform trading volumes disproportionately concentrate on 1 to 3 high-quality assets.

This is particularly true for pre-IPO companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, which carry most of the pre-market demand and trading volume.

Without the team's consent, a company may publicly announce opposition to tokenization, leading to canceled sales and subsequently causing a collapse in token value, as demonstrated by Anthropic's opposition to secondary market SPVs and OpenAI's opposition to Robinhood's stock tokens.

Generally speaking, growth-stage companies have four clear motivations for pursuing an IPO: (1) access to public market capital channels; (2) real-time pricing; (3) providing liquidity exits for founding teams and investors; (4) prestige signaling.

Today, the surge of "mega funds" in the growth stage provides a robust and ample financing environment for the hottest startups, often at extremely high valuations. This landscape diminishes the motivations for growth-stage companies to conduct public fundraising (1) and (2): they no longer need to turn to the public market for funding, and real-time pricing carries the risk of downward price corrections.

Therefore, in today's financing environment, a hot growth startup will only choose to enter the public market when a large number of early employees and investors are eager for immediate liquidity (as was the case when Facebook went public in 2012) or when it serves as a symbol of maturity and prestige.

For a spot tokenized startup platform seeking board approval to provide direct equity channels in the current financing environment, the weight of the latter two motivations is much greater.

Traditional secondary market brokers like Forge and Hiive cater more to liquidity motivations, while prominent closed-end funds like Robinhood Ventures and USVC can be said to cater to prestige motivations.

Nevertheless, in addition to traditional IPO motivations, a series of emerging designs have appeared, such as tokenized startup baskets, tokenized accelerator models, and tokenized community offerings, which can address this founder interest alignment issue:

A tokenized startup basket refers to a tradable portfolio of growth-stage startups rather than a single tokenized company.

This is a pathway provided by closed-end funds like Robinhood Ventures. This mechanism can satisfy motivations for liquidity, prestige, and even capital acquisition while alleviating the downward revaluation pressure brought by "real-time pricing" through the use of net asset value (NAV) multiples (somewhat similar to DAT).

The tokenized accelerator model applies traditional accelerator and incubator models (like YC, HFO, South Park Commons) to help startups achieve growth from 0 to 1 in exchange for their agreement to tokenize shares.

We see platforms like Street and MetaDAO effectively providing this model; they address the founder interest alignment issue by standing alongside founders and genuinely helping them grow.

Tokenized community offerings may be the most interesting and worth-exploring model for tokenized startups. As demonstrated by the 2020 Uniswap airdrop, tokens can serve as excellent incentives for everyday users who use the product daily.

If executed properly, token airdrops can lower customer acquisition costs (CAC) by subsidizing natural user activity, promoting project marketing, and enhancing user satisfaction, especially for consumer-facing projects.

For example, Revolut conducted a round of community equity financing, raising $1.3 million from early users at a valuation of $40 million. This served a marketing function, transforming users into owners and advocates, with those early supporters achieving 400 times returns.

However, token airdrops can also be a double-edged sword; many crypto projects' airdrops have been plagued by "farming" behavior, internal share accusations, and immediate sell-off pressure.

3.2 Non-U.S. Jurisdictions

Another avenue to bypass founder alignment issues is to go global. Many discussions around tokenized startups (and their trading volumes) currently take a U.S.-centric perspective, focusing on the hottest U.S. companies and assuming public listings in the U.S. market.

However, the U.S. public and private capital markets have served growth-stage companies exceptionally well, making it difficult to justify the additional benefits of tokenized issuance to companies.

However, the situation may not be the same in other regions, where local capital markets may be inefficient and unable to provide the best liquidity or pricing for the fastest-growing companies. For example, Wise initially listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2021.

However, in May 2026, it moved its primary listing to the U.S. Nasdaq, believing this move could attract a more liquid market, reach a broader base of retail and institutional investors, and achieve more generous valuation multiples.

This geographical divergence in valuation and capital acquisition is also evident in the differences in valuation multiples for AI companies between the U.S. and China.

Leading AI companies in the U.S. typically have sales multiples of 15 to 40 times, while Chinese AI companies have much more conservative sales multiples, closer to 5 to 15 times. This discount may be attributed to capital acquisition capabilities; the Chinese capital market is generally more difficult to enter than the U.S. market.

As different parts of the cutting-edge supply chain, such as AI, robotics, semiconductors, and biotechnology, become dispersed globally, and related companies list in Asian and European markets, this geographical valuation arbitrage becomes particularly interesting.

While non-U.S. jurisdictions have this structural advantage in tokenized startups, current empirical experiments and trading volumes remain limited. This may be due to the difficulty in finding high-demand startups willing to experiment with equity structures, as well as the complex regulatory environment regarding foreign investment and tokenization in local markets.

South Korea is a particularly noteworthy non-U.S. market for tokenized startups.

South Korea has:

(1) Several nationally leading companies in the AI supply chain with global investor demand, such as Samsung and SK Hynix.

(2) A new legal framework for "stock tokens."

(3) Brokerages actively focused on pre-market investments.

(4) A larger number of cryptocurrency investors than stock investors.

This may be part of the reason why TradeXYZ has actively begun listing perpetual contracts on Korean stocks.

One of the biggest advantages of tokenization is its geographical arbitrage ability, providing underlying channels for global audiences to invest in companies worldwide.

Tokenized startup platforms have their global liquidity base and the potential to open up to a broader base of retail and institutional investors, likely becoming part of the next generation of upgraded listing strategies for rapidly growing companies like Wise outside of strong local capital markets.

3.3 Price Discovery Design for Perpetual Contracts

Another route for tokenized startup platforms is to employ perpetual contract strategies. If what is owned is merely a synthetic tool that does not represent underlying equity, then the board has nothing to nullify. This avoids the need for team involvement and board approval. However, synthetic assets sidestep legitimacy issues but bring about price discovery challenges.

Existing perpetual contract markets (such as perpetual contracts for crypto tokens, stocks, and commodities) typically rely on liquid spot markets and reliable price oracles to manage funding rates and synthetic prices. However, as the name suggests, private startups do not have a liquid public market.

The closest market available is tender offers and secondary market purchases, with platforms like Ventuals using them to anchor their funding rates. However, these are often unreliable and frequently underestimate the price of the underlying asset.

For example, on Ventuals, the funding rate within a 5% range of oracle prices is about 15% annualized, and beyond that range, it rises exponentially, imposing punitive costs on long positions.

TradeXYZ has taken the opposite approach, relying on a price discovery mechanism without oracles. For instance, in the fundraising for Cerebras Systems, TradeXYZ established a Hyperp mechanism that derives reference prices from recent market pricing, allowing contracts to discover prices within the narrow time window between S-1 filing and official listing. Its performance has outperformed any other mechanism in the market.

The CBRS perpetual contract launched on May 1 at a reference price of $175, with trading prices stabilizing between $288 and $320 within two weeks, reaching around $340 an hour before the opening, differing from the actual Nasdaq opening price of $350 by less than 3%.

This estimated price is about 84% higher than the investment bank's pricing of $185 and significantly more accurate than the pricing from secondary market brokers like Hiive ($225) and Forge ($113.50). This demonstrates the tremendous success of perpetual contracts as a tool.

However, this process may not necessarily be scalable, as clear price discovery relies on upcoming, verifiable convergence events. If Cerebras does not complete its listing within a specific timeframe, the contract will settle at the time-weighted average price of its own price.

In this sense, the "perpetual contract price discovery" mechanism ultimately resembles traditional futures contracts and may not necessarily apply to early assets that will not go public soon.

Therefore, the design space for tokenized startups based on perpetual contracts remains very broad. Scalable models have yet to be established, and it is likely to be a model that integrates crypto perpetual contracts with traditional futures, prediction markets, secondary spot markets, contracts for difference (CFDs), and other primitives.

With Kalshi recently entering the perpetual contract market and Hyperliquid bringing HIP-4 into the outcome prediction market, we see a significant convergence happening among all these different pricing tools. The pricing of tokenized pre-IPO startups is likely to become a catalyst for pioneering a new field of derivatives, one that is more efficient and user-friendly for everyday users.

3.4 Legal Structures and Regulation

From a legal structure perspective, many of these tokenized startup tools, such as Street's ERC-S, MetaDAO's DAO LLC, and SPV-supported tokens, still belong to novel experimental tools that have yet to withstand the test of time from regulators with strict enforcement intentions.

Even though the U.S. recently introduced the "Clarity Act" for digital commodities, it has not resolved the issue of tokenized equity.

From public statements, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seems to classify these tokenized startups into two distinct categories based on whether the tokens are issued directly by the company or by a third party.

Tokens sponsored by the issuer are securities themselves, just in a different form, and thus fall under traditional securities law. Whether the official ledger is on-chain (transferring tokens equals transferring shares) or off-chain (tokens trigger ledger updates), they are treated the same as ordinary stocks: they must be registered or qualify for exemptions and bear all standard disclosure and reporting obligations.

The treatment of third-party tokens depends on what they actually convey. Custodial tokens are securities rights as defined in Article 8 of the U.S. Uniform Commercial Code, which are real securities transactions, but they are a claim to custodial shares rather than the shares themselves, meaning you also bear the risk of the custodian's bankruptcy.

Synthetic tokens are completely independent securities issued by third parties, not attached to any rights to the reference company, and require separate registration or exemption: linked securities (notes or SPVs tracking target value) fall into this category; while securities-based swaps (like Ventuals-style perpetual contracts) are the most restricted, prohibiting sales to ordinary U.S. retail investors unless registered and traded on a national exchange.

Conclusion

Whether it is pre-market perpetual contracts, SPVs, closed-end funds, or secondary market tender offers, each tool is attempting to win back the opportunities that the public market once freely granted to the masses: the ability to gain early, liquid investment exposure while companies are at their highest growth rates, rather than allowing it to be monopolized by growth equity funds.

Today, we are well aware that this demand is real, but the infrastructure still needs improvement. For tokens, its significance is even more profound. The past few years have been a crisis of identity: project tokens have become second-class citizens, governance has turned into empty talk, and value has accumulated elsewhere.

Reconstructing the issuance mechanism and granting tokens true claims to risk-scale upside may be the era's mission that can liberate them. With infrastructure never seen before in the first wave, tokens may be able to redeem their core vision promised during the early frenzy phase.