24/7 Tokenized Pre-IPO Trading
Xavier Ekkel, founder of PreStocks, on 24/7 tokenized pre-IPO stock
The real shift is not just putting private shares on a blockchain, it is turning a slow, broker driven secondary sale into software. In the old workflow, buyers, sellers, SPVs, lawyers, transfer agents, and company approvals can stretch a trade into weeks, with different fees and terms on every deal. The on-chain model keeps the SPV and compliance layer in the background, but gives users a live tradable token that can move instantly, trade around the clock, and plug into other financial apps.
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The manual part of private secondaries is not just paperwork, it is market structure. EquityZen describes a market crowded with brokers, SPVs, and gatekeepers that slow deals, widen price gaps, and keep liquidity fragmented. PreStocks is trying to compress that stack into one standardized tokenized instrument with one visible market price.
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Automation matters most for small investors. EquityZen built software to make $20,000 transactions workable, and Monark shows why, private securities still need suitability checks, fund movement, reconciliation, custody, and reporting. Tokenization does not erase those jobs, it turns them into back end infrastructure so the front end can feel closer to buying a public stock.
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The big upside is programmability. PreStocks and Jarsy both frame tokenized exposure as something that can later be borrowed against, lent out, fractionally owned, or used across wallets and DeFi apps. That is a step beyond today’s private market, where an SPV interest mostly just sits there until a tender, a company approval, or an IPO creates an exit.
If this model works, private market infrastructure will start to split in two. The legal ownership and issuer controls will stay centralized, but the trading, pricing, and portfolio experience will become continuous and software native. That points toward a market where the winning platforms are the ones that hide the legal machinery, standardize the asset, and make private exposure behave more like an everyday financial product.