Author: Jae, PANews

When top global unicorns like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic began appearing on Binance Web3 wallet's asset list, a battle for "pre-IPO dividends" shifted from Silicon Valley VC meeting rooms to the order books of cryptocurrency exchanges.

The boundaries between the private equity market and crypto finance are rapidly blurring. From Binance's launch of pre-IPO assets to Bitget's US IPO subscription and Gate's pre-IPO stock pre-market contracts, the three major crypto exchanges are taking drastically different paths to collectively enter the pre-IPO arena.

For ordinary investors, this means that previously only private equity firms and private funds could obtain scarce shares, which can now be acquired for just a few hundred dollars.

When traditional equity meets blockchain, a duet of assets spanning two financial markets has begun.

The pre-IPO sector is a three-way battle: Binance Wallet attracts users, Bitget focuses on compliance, and Gate offers leverage.

PANews observed that the major crypto trading platforms have taken vastly different approaches to entering the Pre-IPO market, with no single template, resulting in three distinct schools of thought, each occupying a unique position in this field.

Perhaps due to compliance considerations, Binance did not choose to list the coin directly on the exchange, but instead deployed its strategy in the wallet.

Binance Wallet has added 5 new pre-IPO listings, covering 5 of the hottest companies in the global tech industry, including SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Anduril, and xAI.

However, Binance Wallet is merely a traffic and transaction portal; the actual issuer of the assets is PreStcoks, a tokenization protocol on the Solana blockchain.

The logic behind the entire model is the tokenization of SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) equity. PreStocks holds equity in the underlying company by establishing a series of SPVs, and then mints mapped tokens at a 1:1 ratio based on the equity value, which are eventually listed on Binance Wallet.

For users, this model lowers the entry barrier of the traditional private equity market, which often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, to tens of dollars, enabling truly fragmented investment.

For Binance, this is a preemptive move to gain an edge in the pre-IPO race by using wallet access, turning equity assets into standard assets for crypto users, providing asset diversity within its own business ecosystem, and further attracting or converting more users.

Unlike Binance, which focuses on the wallet side, Bitget has taken a more compliant approach by launching its own platform, "IPO Prime," with its first asset being preSPAX, the equity token of SpaceX, a company owned by Elon Musk, and backed by the licensed digital securities issuer Republic.

Republic's logic for issuing preSPAX tokens is closer to "debt financing," with the advantage of a strict legal framework. While preSPAX tokens do not grant holders direct voting rights or dividend rights, they are regulated assets issued under Regulation S and are defined as a type of structured note linked to the future IPO performance of their underlying assets.

Bitget has also introduced the "IPO" strategy from the crypto and stock markets to tokenized equity investment. Users receive tiered subscription quotas based on their VIP level, and direct subscriptions are supported using stablecoins USDT and USDGO, allowing them to gain exposure to SpaceX without the hassle of fiat currency exchange.

Gate took a different approach, choosing a derivatives-based pricing strategy and launching the SpaceX Pre-IPO stock pre-market contract, settled in USDT and supporting 1-10x leverage.

This product does not involve actual equity transfers; it is essentially a price discovery and market-based game for SpaceX's post-IPO valuation. The significance of this model lies in providing a publicly available, real-time valuation reference for unicorns that have not yet gone public.

Because valuations of private companies are typically infrequent and opaque, Gate's pre-market contracts allow investors to price SpaceX's value in real time based on the company's latest developments or market sentiment. This "synthetic asset" property provides crypto-native users with a highly capital-efficient way to participate.

However, pre-IPO assets are inherently highly volatile, and Gate's 10x leverage is undoubtedly a double-edged sword.

Valuations of private companies can fluctuate wildly due to a single rumor. With 10x leverage, this translates to widespread liquidation of retail investors, potentially triggering irrational chain reactions in the crypto market.

In addition, the tokenized stock trading platform StableStock has begun to support users to participate in Hong Kong IPOs through stablecoins.

Pre-IPO assets have two sides: wealth is "equalized" but rights are lacking.

Pre-IPO asset trading is not only a financial innovation in the crypto market, but it is also quietly rewriting the underlying logic of wealth distribution.

Previously, SpaceX's private placements were exclusively for top Silicon Valley venture capitalists, sovereign wealth funds, and billionaires. In February, its valuation had already reached $1.25 trillion, and the current IPO target valuation exceeds $2 trillion. Retail investors who want to share in SpaceX's growth dividends must wait until after the IPO, by which time most of the valuation gains will have already been snapped up by institutional investors.

Now, even a student with only $100 can enter the market with a valuation of $1.5 trillion (as provided by Bitget). Equity tokenization has democratized the benefits of technological growth from a small circle in Silicon Valley to every ordinary user.

Whether it's on-chain transactions or pre-market contracts, both transform the valuation of pre-IPO assets from an "information black box" into a "pricing signal." When large amounts of capital are traded in SpaceX, the resulting price feedback can feed back into the traditional financial market, providing more accurate data references for LP valuations, thereby ending the information monopoly in the private equity market.

Stablecoins are no longer just "speculative chips" in the crypto market. As users trade pre-IPO assets through stablecoins, stablecoins will also become a productivity tool for cross-border equity transactions, deeply integrated with the real economy, and evolving into a global financial "transaction medium".

However, behind the glamorous narrative, equity tokenization still teeters on the edge of a precipice of structural risks, with every step fraught with hidden dangers.

Currently, the biggest drawback of all Pre-IPO products is that Pre-IPO token holders are not granted shareholder status, voting rights, or board seats.

Crypto analyst Phyrex points out that current pre-IPO products are essentially SPV mirror images. Users trust not SpaceX, but the issuer's credibility.

If the underlying company undergoes a large-scale restructuring, bankruptcy liquidation, or initiates malicious anti-dilution clauses before listing, token holders have virtually no legal recourse.

Furthermore, even though PreStocks operates on the Solana blockchain, the authenticity of its asset backing still rests with the off-chain SPV manager. If the manager engages in insider trading, misappropriates assets, or faces physical seizure by local regulators, any off-chain physical risk could directly cut off on-chain liquidity, rendering decentralization merely a facade.

It is worth noting that, to circumvent SEC regulations, most pre-IPO products restrict participation to US users. However, as pre-IPO assets expand, regulators may redefine the legal status of these assets. In the future, if regulations require tokenized equity to follow the full IPO compliance process, the current product advantages will become compliance constraints.

The crypto market is facing an "asset shortage," prompting the introduction of pre-IPO assets to capture growth dividends.

This pre-IPO boom corresponds to an "asset shortage" in the crypto market. As the world enters a new industrial cycle, major AI unicorns are announcing their IPO plans, and fundraising activities are in full swing.

Investors are also starting to pursue growth assets with higher betas. Pre-IPO assets like SpaceX, which are at the forefront of the AI ​​wave, are essentially a kind of "long-term call option" with extremely high odds.

Therefore, exchanges are gradually introducing pre-IPO assets to supplement the crypto market with high-growth equity backed by real-world productivity. This diversification of assets will also further reduce the speculative nature of the crypto industry and smooth out cyclical market fluctuations.

However, the pain points of traditional pre-IPO transactions lie in their long settlement cycles and lack of transparency. Tokenization technology, through on-chain atomic settlement, reduces equity transfer time from weeks to seconds. Although legal confirmation still requires off-chain time, the instant transfer of on-chain economic rights is simulating liquidity similar to a secondary market, thereby improving the pricing efficiency of unicorn equity valuations.

Bitget's concept of "Universal Exchange" reveals the ambition of all crypto exchanges: to go beyond simply matching cryptocurrency transactions and become a unified portal for users to manage cryptocurrencies, stocks, equities, bonds, and commodities.

Pre-IPO assets are the perfect tool for exchanges to attract users. By introducing these scarce assets, exchanges can convert traditional users interested in AI equity into crypto users.

For investors, the key to participating in this feast lies in identifying "fake air certificates." In the volatile financial markets, the authenticity of the underlying assets is the eternal anchor.

Tokenized equity delivers the benefits of technological advancements to every corner of the globe through stablecoins. Amidst the interplay between regulation and innovation, a more transparent, efficient, and equitable global equity trading system is quietly taking shape on the blockchain.