Why Now
Three forces are converging.
The liquidity crisis is acute
Secondaries volume hit $240 billion in 2025, up 48% year over year. Five year rolling DPI hit its lowest recorded level. Distributions as a percentage of AUM fell to 6% in early 2025, less than half the 2015 to 2019 average of 16%. Average buyout hold periods reached 6.6 years, the highest in two decades.
$240 billion per year in secondaries is revealed preference.
The regulatory window is open
SEC custody modernization for digital assets. SEC Rule 17a-4 compliance record keeping alternatives for electronic records. FinCEN CDD relief reducing onboarding friction for qualified investors. The GENIUS Act providing federal stablecoin clarity.
The regulatory environment for building compliant digital financial infrastructure is more accommodating than it has been in decades. This will not last forever. The current posture reflects a specific political and institutional alignment that favors innovation within existing frameworks.
Building now means building with regulatory tailwinds. Building later means building against them.
The technology is ready
Sub-second blockchain settlement on Solana. Regulatory-grade cloud storage and audit logging. Passwordless authentication. Automated KYC/AML verification pipelines.
Five years ago, building this platform would have required ten times the engineering team and produced a worse product. The cost of running compliant financial infrastructure has dropped by an order of magnitude. What used to require a prime brokerage relationship, a custody bank, and a transfer agent consortium now can run on cloud infrastructure with direct regulatory registrations.
The structural backdrop
Companies are staying private longer. Median revenue at IPO is now $218 million. Over 1,200 unicorns have chosen not to go public. The number of U.S. public companies has dropped 50% since the 1990s.
Institutional allocators are increasing private market allocations. Retail qualified purchasers want access. The capital is moving whether the infrastructure exists or not.