Written by: Chandler

TL;DR

In Q1 2026, the weekly trading volume of commodity perpetual contracts (gold, silver, crude oil) on cryptocurrency exchanges skyrocketed from $38.1M to $25B, an increase of 65,463%. The tokenization of traditional assets will be the main theme for Crypto in the next 5-10 years, while Pre-IPO tokenization is just a newly emerging category in this wave.

In April, three leading exchanges—Bitget, Gate, and Binance (PreStocks)—launched SpaceX-related tokenized products almost simultaneously. While their compliance methods differ, their essence is the same: breaking down the pre-IPO market share that was previously only available to ultra-high net worth clients into smaller pieces for retail investors.

This article aims to clarify two main points: first, what traditional Pre-IPO actually is, and second, how retail investors can participate.

The tokenization of traditional assets will be the main theme for Crypto in the next 5-10 years

According to statistics, in Q1 2026, the weekly trading volume of commodity perpetual contracts (gold, silver, crude oil) on cryptocurrency exchanges soared from $38.1M to $25B, a growth of 65,463%. After Binance launched the TradFi Perpetual sector in January, the cumulative trading volume over three months exceeded $153B with over 114 million transactions; its XAG (silver) contract achieved an average daily trading volume of $1.31B, and its global market share jumped from 0.2% to 4.9% (an increase of 23.5 times).

The most remarkable event was the war with Iran at the end of February, when the U.S. and Israel targeted Iran over the weekend, leading to a market shutdown for traditional futures, stocks, and foreign exchanges, while the cryptocurrency market continued to trade. At that time, Hyperliquid's oil perpetual surged by 5%, Tether's gold XAUT trading volume surpassed $300 million in a single day, and Bitwise's CIO dubbed it "the weekend that changed finance."

U.S. stocks, precious metals, crude oil, and foreign exchange—assets that previously only traded during business hours—are now being tokenized, put on-chain, and providing 24/7 global liquidity. Pre-IPO tokenization is just a recently added category to this wave.

Source: BitMEX Research

What is Pre-IPO?

The Pre-IPO secondary market (old stock trading) has existed for over a decade, with a global trading volume of $160B in 2024, and the direct secondary market in the U.S. alone accounting for $61.1B. Buyers are primarily family offices, sovereign funds, institutional investors, and high-net-worth individuals, with individual transactions typically starting at $10M, leaving retail investors largely shut out.

The vast majority of transactions are conducted via SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles): original shareholders place their shares into a specially formed shell company, which then sells its shares to new buyers. Buyers receive shares in the SPV, holding an indirect stake in the underlying company. The reason is that old stock trades rarely allow strangers direct access to the cap table (the company’s shareholder registry), as this triggers the other shareholders' ROFR (Right of First Refusal), making the process cumbersome and potentially facing interception by original shareholders. Thus, what buyers ultimately purchase are LP interests or Units of the SPV, which equates to an indirect holding in the old stock.

Due to a high concentration of trading activity in a few top targets, U.S. AI and aerospace giants like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic have long accounted for 30-40% of transaction volume, alongside leading unicorns like ByteDance, Stripe, Databricks, and xAI; the top 15 firms capture about 83% of the whole market's transaction volume. (This concentration is also why even if Bitget/Gate releases only SpaceX tokens, they can easily raise over $100M, as supply for top Pre-IPOs has been consistently scarce and demand highly concentrated.)

The vast majority of these are U.S.-based targets, making CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.) the largest regulatory hurdle. It restricts foreign investment into sensitive U.S. industries (AI, semiconductors, defense), and funds from certain countries seeking to buy SpaceX or Anthropic are subject to intense scrutiny. Therefore, sellers usually stipulate that certain countries' UBOs cannot purchase—GPs will penetrate the SPV to check whether the ultimate controller of the buyer is from restricted nationalities like China, Russia, or Iran. The deeper the layers, the harder it is to check, but it is not absolutely foolproof; we previously encountered a case where a Chinese UBO was discovered in a two-layer SPV, and the entire deal fell apart.

Sources: Caplight PitchBook, Augment

After a U.S. company goes public, there is also a standard Lock-up Period: SEC Rule 144 along with dealer agreements stipulate that early shareholders and employees' shares can only be sold in the public market six months after the IPO. This rule applies to almost all U.S. companies (Facebook, Coinbase, Reddit, Cerebras are all six months). This is why Bitget/Gate's Pre-IPO "tokens had to wait six months for redemption," but it does not affect pre-market trading.

Sharing real transaction details of Pre-IPO

Ticket size threshold is extremely high

Traditional Pre-IPO ticket sizes generally start at $10M; transactions below $1M are rarely accepted—it's not that they don’t want to, it's because the fixed costs (legal fees, KYC, SPV setup, channel fees) do not allow for it. Therefore, the recent actions by exchanges represent a disruptive attempt that breaks down class barriers. Retail investors (and even only advanced players who have conditions such as U.S. stock accounts) used to have to wait until after an IPO to participate in trading, but now exchanges, although slightly more expensive, at least provide the opportunity for everyday people to participate.

Broker/FA chaos

A cross-border Pre-IPO deal typically passes through multiple layers:

Bottom-layer GP - Rep (seller representative) - Primary broker - Secondary broker - … - FA - Customer

Each layer adds a 1-5% fee. A deal valued at $500B at the bottom may exceed $600B by the time it reaches the real buyer.

Take SpaceX, for example, with a genuine market price of approximately $1.25T plus an access fee of 3-11% (varying by channel and layer); this means the final price is approximately $1.375T without considering compliance costs for Tokenization. Overall, the price provided by exchanges is reasonable, likely aimed at attracting new users.

Moreover, most Block supply on the market is fictitious—shares from the same batch are listed multiple times by various brokers, with less than 10% truly actionable. For instance, SpaceX has listed orders at a $1.2T valuation, but deeper communications reveal that all are fictitious orders; even major platforms and brokers are rife with such situations.

Sources: Some old stock trading platforms

If a transaction involves an LP Interest Swap, you also need to obtain GP Consent, which is the consent from the GP of the underlying SPV for the transfer of LP shares. GPs have the right to refuse. The real situation in the industry is that GPs are generally not welcoming to such transfers—because auditing a new LP, ensuring compliance, and introducing strangers are all cumbersome processes. Thus, in many cases, you need to bribe the GP to get things done, which adds another layer of expense.

Poor liquidity is the biggest pain point of Pre-IPO old stocks

Exiting partway is extremely difficult; you either wait for the company's IPO (usually 3-7 years), and then typically have to wait for an additional six-month lock-up period after the IPO. Or you need to find a new buyer and go through a structured process all over again—two to three weeks (at the earliest) + FA fees.

Every transfer is an independent OTC transaction, requiring the redoing of legal documents, KYC/AML/UBO penetration, and GP approval. This is why Pre-IPO has always been priced as "non-liquid assets."

How ordinary people can participate in this round of Pre-IPO

One can anticipate that the market will soon see a series of old stock tokenization products, which are fundamentally the same: platforms purchase real old stocks in the traditional Pre-IPO market and then fragment them into tokens to sell to retail investors.

For ordinary people, this provides the chance to enter before the company goes public, benefiting from valuation increases with each subsequent round.

Top-quality targets typically see financing valuations steadily increase. SpaceX has risen from $74B in 2021 to over $1.4T now; OpenAI from $29B to over $852B; Anthropic from $4B to over $800B; ByteDance from $75B to over $600B. Each new round of financing elevates valuations, lifting the value of old shareholders accordingly.

However, it is crucial to be clear that this is not a guaranteed profit. Historically, Stripe experienced a valuation drop from $95B to $50B in a down round, TrueLayer dropped 30%, Cybereason dropped 90%, and WeWork went bankrupt after a valuation of $49B. In 2023, 128 unicorns globally saw their valuations drop, with 42 directly falling out of the unicorn category.

Thus, the key to participating in Pre-IPO is selecting targets, not attempting to catch trends, but rather profiting from the natural rise in company valuations over the long term—rather than rushing to trade and trying to profit from short-term volatility like during IDOs in the crypto space. Many Crypto users treat Pre-IPO as they would with crypto IDOs, which are two entirely different logics.

To summarize the participation logic:

1. Do you have a long-term positive outlook on this target? Is SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic worth the valuation levels after IPO? Are you willing to hold until the next round of financing or post-IPO?

2. Is the product selected safe? Who is the issuer? Where is the bottom line? Who can be pursued in case of an issue?

The RWA form in the next three years

The RWA (Real World Asset) transformation of Pre-IPO is still in very early stages; top targets have scarce supply, highly concentrated demand, and long-term upward valuations. Over the next few months, tokenized products for leading targets like OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Stripe, ByteDance, and Kimi will gradually appear.

This is merely a small branch of the overall Tokenization process; the main four-tier structure can be clearly anticipated as:

Stablecoin issuers: provide on-chain dollars and settlement gateways

Public blockchain networks: support asset issuance and circulation

Trading and distribution platforms: CEX, DEX. Additionally, we believe there is another potential player, LaunchPad / IDO platforms (e.g., Buidlpad, etc.) that already have the full set of capabilities for KYC, issuance, subscription, and distribution of new assets; past experience with crypto tokens means they can now issue Pre-IPO tokens

Asset issuance service providers: companies providing services to put various assets on-chain

It can be foreseen that this main line of Tokenization will not only give birth to a batch of unicorns but also has the opportunity to nurture new trillion-dollar infrastructures and several hundred-billion-dollar platform players.

Everything is just beginning.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。