The market demand for pre-IPO assets is real and enormous, but all existing supply-side solutions—whether closed-end funds, SPV tokens, or synthetic perpetual contracts—have significant structural flaws.

On March 19, 2026, @fundrise Innovation Fund (NYSE: VCX) debuted on the NYSE with an offering price of $31.25. Within seven trading days, its share price reached a high of $575, a 1,740% increase over the offering price, while its net asset value per share (NAV) remained consistently around $19, representing a peak premium of nearly 30 times. On March 26, short-selling firm Citron Research released a short-selling report and sent a letter to the SEC, causing the share price to plummet by approximately 40% that day.

This article takes the $VCX incident as a core case and analyzes it from six dimensions: holding structure, comparison with similar products, causes of premium, product nature, rights structure risks, and parallel paths in the crypto market.

The study argues that the extreme premium of VCXs does not stem from the expected excess returns of the underlying assets, but rather from the combination of three structural factors: extreme scarcity of circulating shares (with only slightly over 10% of the shares not locked up), strong endorsement from the AI industry narrative, and institutional inequality in access for retail investors through institutional channels. From a product perspective, VCXs are essentially financial instruments that sell access qualifications under a compliant guise. Their premium logic differs fundamentally from the flywheel mechanism of @MicroStrategy, and they face pressure for the access premium to rapidly disappear after the underlying company completes its IPO.

I. Event Overview: The Surge and Decline within Seven Days

On March 19, 2026, Fundrise Innovation Fund (NYSE: VCX) officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with an offering price of $31.25 per share. The core selling point of this closed-end fund is simple and direct: packaging the equity of top Silicon Valley unlisted technology companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX into a financial product that ordinary investors can freely buy and sell on the secondary market.

However, what happened after the IPO was probably unexpected even by the issuer itself. The stock surged 63% on its first day of trading and continued to climb for the next four trading days, reaching an all-time high of $575 on March 25th, a 1,739% increase from the IPO price of $31.25. Bloomberg reported that as of the close of trading on March 24th, VCX was trading at $314.99, while its underlying asset's net asset value (NAV) per share was only about $18.97, representing a premium of approximately 16.6 times. By the time it reached its peak of $575, the market premium had approached 30 times the underlying asset value.

VCX stock price chart for the 7 days following its listing (March 19 - March 26)

On March 26, Citron Research, a well-known short-selling firm, announced a short position on VCX and published a report pointing out that the fund's stock price was still trading above $400 despite an asset value of approximately $19, constituting a serious decoupling. Citron also sent a letter to the SEC requesting an investigation into whether Fundrise Advisors LLC continued to hire social media influencers, YouTube bloggers, and content publishers to pay for VCX's promotional activities. This was based on the fact that Fundrise Advisors LLC had previously been formally penalized by the SEC in 2023 for failing to disclose payments of approximately $8 million to over 200 influencers for promotional purposes. VCX's stock price plummeted by approximately 40% that day, falling from a previous closing price of $380 to approximately $226, with an intraday low of $182.01.

Key price points for VCX since its IPO (Data source: Bloomberg, CNBC, investing.com; data as of March 26, 2026; compiled by Go2Mars)

II. Portfolio Structure: What exactly are they buying?

VCX disclosed its top ten holdings as of February 15, 2026, in its prospectus and fund website. The narrative logic of the entire portfolio is very clear: Anthropic (20.7%) is the largest holding, supplemented by Databricks (17.7%) and OpenAI (9.9%), and further complemented by high-profile projects with high recognition such as Anduril, SpaceX, and Epic Games.

However, the very structure of the holdings is precisely the most direct irony of this premium. Using VCX's NAV of approximately $19 as a benchmark, and calculating based on the peak market price of $575 on March 25th, the market was willing to pay a premium of about 30 times for these pre-IPO shares. In other words, the price paid by investors who bought VCX that day, when applied to Anthropic, meant that its valuation premium far exceeded its private placement valuation, and this occurred under a closed-end fund structure with extremely low liquidity and no direct redemption of holdings.

VCX Top 10 Holdings (as of February 15, 2026)

III. Comparison with Similar Products: Similar Logic, Different Fates

VCX is not an isolated case. In fact, between 2024 and 2026, at least three closed-end funds or similar products with the core strategy of holding equity in private technology companies have been listed in the United States, and their performance has shown very different market reactions.

DXYZ (Destiny Tech100) is the closest benchmark to VCX. This fund listed on the NYSE in March 2024, initially experiencing a similar retail frenzy, with its price surging to over $100 at one point, while its NAV was only around $5, representing a premium of nearly 2,000%. However, subsequent performance has proven that this premium cannot be sustained: as of March 26, 2026, DXYZ closed at approximately $29.8, with its latest publicly traded NAV at $19.97 (as of December 31, 2025), representing a premium of about 50%, a significant narrowing from its peak. Its 52-week high was $50.50, still down approximately 33% from its initial peak.

A comparison of pre-IPO closed-end funds (as of March 26, 2026)

RVI (Robinhood Ventures Fund I) represents a different fate. Also in March 2026, Robinhood launched its own closed-end fund, priced at $25 in its IPO, raising approximately $658 million. However, RVI's share price fell below its IPO price on its first day of trading, closing at $21, a 16% drop. The market's lukewarm reception contrasted sharply with the euphoria surrounding VCX. As of March 26, 2026, RVI was trading at approximately $32, a premium of about 28% over its IPO price, but this premium was negligible compared to VCX.

The significance of this comparison lies in the fact that, for closed-end funds that are both pre-IPO equity investments, the degree to which they support the AI narrative directly determines the intensity of market speculation.

In the VCX portfolio, AI-related stocks (Anthropic, OpenAI, and Databricks) account for nearly 50% of the total holdings, which is the core reason why they are so sought after in the current AI boom.
RVI's portfolio leans more towards fintech and platform companies like Revolut and Databricks, with relatively little AI concept, so retail investors have little leverage.

Citron Research offers a concise estimation framework: if the VCX premium eventually compresses to the current DXYZ premium level of approximately 35%, the corresponding fair value of VCX would be around $26, representing a drop of over 93% from its peak of $575. This prediction is not a certainty, but it accurately describes the path risk of closed-end fund premiums reverting from extreme highs to the mean of NAV.

IV. Reasons for the premium: Imbalance in resources, narrative, and institutional factors.

The extreme premium that VCX experienced after its listing cannot be explained by a single emotional factor, but rather by the combined effect of three structural reasons.

The first layer is the extreme scarcity of shares. According to Fundrise's official information, VCX had accumulated approximately 100,000 existing investors before its listing, whose shares were locked up for six months from the listing date and could not be sold. A fund spokesperson publicly stated that only slightly more than 10% of the total shares were not locked up. This means that with extremely active buying, the number of shares actually available for trading in the market is extremely limited. Any marginal purchase will have a magnifying effect on the price, pushing the share price far above NAV. This is a natural amplifier of the closed-end fund structure under special supply and demand conditions.

The second layer is the strong endorsement of the AI narrative. In early 2026, competition in the large-scale AI market remained fierce. Anthropic launched its new Claude AI agent, which allows users to control their computers, and OpenAI's valuation continued to climb. The high level of attention across the entire AI industry provided the backdrop for sustained emotional momentum. VCX completed its IPO precisely at this juncture, with Anthropic as its largest holding and OpenAI as its third-largest, effectively becoming an extremely rare channel for retail investors to directly participate in top-tier AI private equity assets. This scarcity was priced by the market at an extreme premium.

The third and most fundamental layer is a systemic asymmetry: those with the right to enter the private equity market are selling to those who are not allowed in at inflated prices. The underlying assets of VCXs are acquired by Fundrise through institutional channels in the primary or secondary markets—areas accessible only to top-tier VCs or qualified institutional investors. After these assets are packaged and listed by funds, retail investors are not buying at the primary market price, but rather at a premium of 16 to 30 times their NAV (Net Asset Value) on top of the already significantly inflated secondary market price. This is a completely legally permissible information and channel asymmetry—the institution with the right to acquire the original assets packages them into a publicly traded product and sells it to retail investors lacking pricing power at the highest price market sentiment is willing to pay.

V. Product Essence: Selling market access qualifications under the guise of compliance.

The above analysis reveals a core conclusion: VCXs do not command a premium because of superior asset selection or higher expected returns, but rather because they sell the channel itself. This requires answering the question: what exactly is a VCX product?

From a legal perspective, it is a closed-end fund registered with the SEC, with transparent holdings and a compliant structure, and is no different in essence from any ordinary equity ETF on the market. However, in terms of its actual function, what it sells is not the traditional "expected investment return," but a kind of asset-side access qualification—previously only accessible to top-tier VC institutions and accredited investors—and this qualification is packaged into units that can be traded on the NYSE.

Therefore, the market's willingness to pay a premium of 16 to 30 times NAV is essentially a pricing of this access right, rather than an assessment of the future returns of the underlying assets.

From this perspective, the comparison between VCX and MicroStrategy (MSTR) is quite illustrative. Superficially, they do similar things: encapsulating scarce assets that are difficult to obtain directly (Bitcoin/top-tier pre-IPO equity) into securities tradable on the secondary market, and then charging a premium far exceeding the value of the underlying assets. However, their capital operation logics are fundamentally different:

MSTR raises funds through the continuous issuance of convertible bonds and preferred shares, and then uses the funds to buy more Bitcoin. This mechanism gives it the ability to dynamically expand its balance sheet and continuously increase its holdings, which gives its stock price premium an endogenous basis for maintenance to a certain extent.
VCX, on the other hand, is constrained by the structure of closed-end funds: its asset size is essentially locked after issuance, making it impossible to continuously purchase new assets through refinancing, and the liquidity of its holdings is highly dependent on the IPO or M&A exit of the underlying companies. Once retail investor sentiment subsides, or the number of shares in circulation increases after the six-month lock-up period expires, the pressure to narrow its premium will be far greater than that of MSTR.

Comparison of VCX and MSTR (Strategy) models

In other words, MSTR's premium is supported by a continuously functioning capital mechanism, while VCX's premium mainly stems from scarcity of shares and sentiment-driven factors. This product logic itself is neither right nor wrong, but the risks it inherently carries are more difficult for the market to accurately price than those of ordinary closed-end funds.

Once retail investors buy in at prices far exceeding NAV, they are not actually paying for the value of the asset itself, but rather for the premium of this access qualification—and this premium will face the pressure of rapidly becoming zero after the underlying company completes its IPO and a direct trading channel is established in the public market.

VI. Beyond Premiums: Barriers to Entry and Structured Exports

The problem with this structure is not just the premium itself; the deeper risks lie in two points.

First, the attractiveness of pre-IPO assets relies heavily on their "not yet listed" status rather than the intrinsic value of the assets themselves. Once underlying companies like Anthropic and OpenAI complete their formal IPOs and enter the public market, the channel scarcity premium attached to existing closed-end funds will be quickly eliminated. At that time, the pricing of products like VCX will converge with the public market stock price, and the drawdown risk borne by investors currently holding positions at a premium of more than ten times NAV is highly consistent with the historical trend of DXYZ.
Secondly, a more serious problem lies in the uncertainty of the underlying rights. As shown in the diagram below, companies such as OpenAI and Stripe have publicly issued stern warnings, explicitly stating that holding their equity through an SPV structure violates the transfer restrictions in the shareholder agreement, and declaring that holders of the corresponding tokens or certificates will not be recognized as shareholders on the company's register. If the underlying company refuses to convert shares for the relevant SPV or refuses to recognize its shareholder status during its future formal IPO, secondary market investors who enter at a high premium will ultimately only hold contractual rights to an offshore SPV, not equity in the company in any sense. This fragility of the rights chain is a structural risk that is currently severely underestimated by market sentiment.

OpenAI's official website states that it prohibits the transfer of equity ( https://openai.com/policies/unauthorized-openai-equity-transactions/).

Two key industry observation perspectives can be extracted from the above phenomena:

First, there is indeed a huge real demand for early-stage high-growth assets within the traditional financial system, but this demand cannot be met efficiently and fairly due to the existing compliance framework and structural dilemmas.
Meanwhile, the market's frenzied pricing of pre-IPO assets is more about paying for the entry barriers and liquidity premiums before listing, rather than simply based on the asset's financial fundamentals.

Structural contradictions in the pre-IPO market and solutions for encryption mechanisms

Against the backdrop of traditional financial channels struggling to resolve this supply-demand imbalance and compliance friction, the tokenization mechanism in the crypto asset sector has demonstrated remarkable potential: through tokenization and perpetual contracts, it is possible to bypass entry barriers and structural dilemmas to the greatest extent possible, thereby releasing retail investor sentiment.

Returning to a Crypto Perspective: From Perpetual Contracts to SPV Tokenization

The VCX case demonstrates the structural limitations of traditional financial channels in resolving the supply-demand imbalance and compliance frictions of pre-IPO assets, while the tokenization and perpetual contract mechanisms in the crypto asset field show the possibility of bypassing entry barriers and releasing retail investor sentiment.

Ventuals: Perpetual Contracts with Valuation Exposure

@ventuals, built on Hyperliquid's HIP-3 standard, allows users to trade long and short positions on the valuations of private companies such as OpenAI (vOAI), SpaceX (vSPACE), and Anthropic (vANTHRPC), supporting leverage up to 20x. Settlement is in USDH, pegged to the US dollar. Its pricing method directly maps valuations to contract prices, with the unit of measurement being the company's valuation divided by one billion. For example, if OpenAI's current valuation is $350 billion, then 1 vOAI is approximately $350. Users do not hold any form of equity—the platform explicitly states that Ventures contract holders do not own any economic interest in the underlying companies; their exposure is purely speculative based on valuation changes.

In terms of scale, Ventures has grown rapidly since its launch in October 2025. According to LorisTools, as of February 12, 2026, the platform's cumulative trading volume exceeded $215 million, with 5,342 independent traders and cumulative fees exceeding $70,000. Its cumulative trading volume surpassed $100 million on January 24, 2026, and further exceeded $200 million within the following 17 days, reaching nearly $400 million by March 26, 2026.

From a product perspective, Ventures don't sell access rights, but rather something lighter and more abstract than VCX—a contractual bet on the direction of a private company's valuation changes. Holding a vOAI position doesn't grant users any legal rights to OpenAI, doesn't add them to its shareholder register, and doesn't automatically convert to publicly traded shares with an IPO. This is fundamentally different from VCXs: VCX buyers hold at least a real equity exposure registered with the SEC, while Ventures holders have no claims to the underlying company.

SPV Tokenization Platform: Layer-by-Layer Dilution of the Power Chain

Beyond compliant listing paths like VCX and DXYZ, the crypto market also features a number of pre-IPO tokenization platforms operating through an indirect shareholding model via SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles), including Jarsy, PreStocks, and Paimon Finance. These platforms share a similar architectural logic: they first acquire equity in target companies in the private secondary market, place it into an offshore SPV, and then tokenize and sell the SPV's beneficial certificates to users, creating on-chain tokenized exposures to companies like OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic.

SPV Indirect Holding Tokenization Pre-IPO Issuance Structure Diagram (Data Source: Pharos Researh)

The problem with this structure lies precisely in the nature of the assets held by users:

The tokens held by users correspond to the beneficial certificates of the SPV, rather than the equity of the target company itself.
The SPV may hold fund units rather than direct shares in the target company;
The target company is often unaware of or explicitly opposes the existence of the SPV and its tokenization activities.

This creates a three-layered structural risk: the on-chain token is a mapping of the SPV beneficiary certificate, the SPV certificate is a mapping of indirect equity, and the whole structure may not be compliant from the perspective of the target company.

Both OpenAI and Stripe issued public warnings in 2025, explicitly stating that such SPV shareholding violated the transfer restrictions in their shareholder agreements, and that token holders would not be recognized as legitimate shareholders. Robinhood, having established an entity in Lithuania and launched the OpenAI token in June 2025, was subsequently investigated by Lithuanian regulatory authorities after receiving a warning from OpenAI.

A horizontal comparison of the main methods of obtaining pre-IPO exposure

The lack of transparency in this layer of structure is a clear distinction from VCX. As an SEC-registered closed-end fund, VCX's holdings can be regularly disclosed on its official website, and its legal status is clear; while SPV token platforms typically only show users proof of their asset holdings (that the SPV does indeed hold equity), while the platform's own operational and financial status, as well as the details of the SPV's liabilities, remain largely opaque.

Horizontal comparison: Different pricing logics for the same asset

Using @AnthropicAI as an anchor, the pricing differences across these various channels can be directly quantified. The reference price in the institutional primary market is approximately $259 per share, corresponding to the offering price of Anthropic Series G preferred shares; the Forge private secondary market is roughly the same, at around $259, but has accredited investor thresholds and higher minimum subscription requirements; Hiive, on the other hand, has risen to approximately $556, a price difference of more than double compared to the institutional price. Even within the private secondary market, the differences in information channels have created a clear stratification.

Anthropic pricing comparison across different channels (as of March 26, 2026) (Note: The official website price on Ventures at this time was $547, but after Ventures' conversion mechanism, it was $373 per share)

Upon entering the crypto market, the pricing logic deviates further from the underlying assets. For each share of Anthropic equity, PreStocks tokens are worth approximately $539, Jarsy tokens approximately $876, and perpetual contracts on Ventures approximately $373 (after conversion). These six price points do not correspond to the same asset, but rather to six different levels of access rights—from real preferred stock to SPV beneficial certificates, and then to purely synthetic derivatives. The chain of rights becomes progressively thinner, but the price does not decrease accordingly; sometimes it is even higher.

This phenomenon reveals a key structure: given the highly opaque pricing in the private market, on-chain platforms do not add a markup to a clear benchmark price, but rather seek arbitrage opportunities within a murky zone that already contains a huge range. The price difference of more than double between Hiive and Forge already demonstrates that the so-called "private market price" is never a single anchor point; and the token pricing of crypto platforms is merely adding a liquidity premium and information asymmetry to this range.

Based on the trends, the following points are worth noting.

First, the ceiling for access premiums is determined by the scarcity of supply, not by asset quality. The extreme premiums of VCXs largely stem from the unparalleled scarcity of such products on the NYSE. As RVI, DXYZ, and more similar closed-end funds enter the market, the monopolistic advantage on the supply side will be continuously diluted. Simultaneously, if core assets like Anthropic and OpenAI complete their IPOs, directly opening up the public market, the premium will be forced to converge towards the asset's NAV. DXYZ's trajectory, narrowing from a premium of nearly 2,000% to its current level of approximately 50%, fully validates this logic.
Secondly, the pricing discrepancies in the institutional-grade private secondary market are a prerequisite for all premiums in this product category. For the same asset class from the same company, there is already a price difference of more than double between Forge ($259) and Hiive ($556) – this illustrates that so-called "private market pricing" is never a single anchor, but rather a range highly dependent on information channels and participation qualifications. On-chain token platforms seek arbitrage opportunities within this range, rather than adding to a transparent price base.
Third, the target company's attitude towards the SPV structure will become the biggest exogenous variable in this market. With the IPO expectations for Anthropic and OpenAI becoming increasingly clear, both companies have ample incentive to clean up their shareholder registers before listing and refuse to acknowledge the legality of SPV transfers. At that time, whether SPV token holders can realize their rights at the IPO stage will transform from an ambiguous legal risk into a definite redemption obstacle.
Fourth, the regulatory arbitrage window for on-chain synthetic derivatives such as Ventures is narrowing. Currently, the operation of these products relies to some extent on the unclear regulatory standards for valuation contracts of private companies in major jurisdictions. Once mainstream regulatory frameworks include them in the scope of exchange-traded derivatives, the structural advantages of these protocols will face direct compression.
Fifth, truly sustainable market evolution depends on whether the target company is willing to shift from passive response to active participation. Currently, all supply-side solutions are unilaterally constructed under the premise that the target company does not participate or even opposes them. If the target company can actively participate in tokenization issuance or on-chain equity registration in a compliant manner, the entry barriers may transform from objects of arbitrage into institutional variables that can be collaboratively restructured.

Conclusion: A structural dilemma concerning access rights and pricing power

On the surface, the VCX incident reveals a collective pursuit of top AI assets by retail investors; at a deeper level, it exposes a structural contradiction that has long existed within the traditional financial system: there has always been an entry barrier between high-growth assets in the private equity market and retail investors in the public market, constructed by compliance frameworks and channel thresholds, and this barrier is being commercialized and monetized by various financial products in different ways.

From compliant closed-end funds like VCX and DXYZ, to on-chain synthetic derivatives protocols like Ventures, and SPV token platforms like Jarsy and PreStocks, the supply side is doing the same thing: repackaging scarce assets available through institutional channels and selling them to investors who don't meet the original eligibility criteria. And this "certain method" precisely determines the true value of the assets ultimately held by users at key redemption points.

Three types of products, three different levels of access rights, and three drastically different repayment expectations—and these three differences were almost completely ignored by the market in the face of VCX's frenzied $375 premium. This is probably the most worthy structural legacy that the VCX incident has left for the market in the next stage.

For the pre-IPO market to truly mature, there is an unavoidable structural prerequisite: target companies must actively participate in the design of the issuance and circulation process, rather than passively becoming the underlying narrative of various products. Only when companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are willing to explicitly design and endorse pre-listing participation mechanisms for different types of investors outside their IPO path can this market move from one-way channel arbitrage to effective pricing through collaboration between both parties. This is a critical point that all existing solutions have not yet reached, and it is also the true starting point for the market's eventual standardization.

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