Welcome to FinTech TV.
For decades, the biggest wealth generating opportunities in private markets have been locked behind a massive financial wall.
Now Fairman is a pioneer in on-chain equity infrastructure, and they just submitted a groundbreaking proposal to the SEC Crypto Task Force to modernize these outdated rules.
They are proposing a new system where users.
Developers, and employees can earn the right to invest in private companies regardless of their bank account balance.
Joining me live here in New York City at DAS 2026 is Joris Delanoue, CEO and co-founder of Fairmint.
Great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having us.
Well, you've been at Digital Assets Summit 2025, so what's different this year compared to last?
Last year was a massive change for the industry.
Clearly the message sent to the, the market was America is open for business in crypto.
I have the feeling that this year they just put another coin in the machine and they want people to move even faster on.
Yeah, I think that's a great analogy for what we're seeing.
So tell us what you do at Fairmint and for viewers who might not be familiar.
Yes, at Fairmint we bring equity on chain.
We want to make sure that this equity will move on chain in a way that will be frictionless and with a delightful experience for the customers.
And the funny thing is we started by the private market.
Which is most of the time not the natural path.
Um, a lot of the time you see people trying to tokenize the public stocks because it's much easier when capitals are public, you know, everything, uh, uh, is much easier to manage.
Uh, you have just one type of class of shares.
But the moment that you work on the private markets.
Then you have a lot more complexity.
The caps might have like multiple types of class of shares, multiple investors, different waterfall and preference when it comes to liquidation.
And so for that reason, I think private markets were still at the stone age when the public markets were pushed to move on chain.
And, and you mentioned that 2025.
What was very important last year was the message sent to the public markets.
Because all the participants over the last 12 months, um, They coordinated efforts.
To unlock the on-chain capabilities, um, and when you talk to, um, NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, the TCC, like all the big players.
You will hear them talking interoperability or uh automation of the compliance and the transfer rule, um, all the programmatic things that the the the blockchain can offer.
What's really pity is when you see that happening on the public markets.
You don't really see that on the private side, and this private side.
Grew so much bigger over the last years.
Like in 2025 for the first time, we add the secondaries um for those private companies, almost at the same level as IPO or M&A.
So that's a whole new way of exiting, using secondary SPV.
But under the hood.
When things are tracked through very robust and clear systems in the public markets, on the private one, still tracking ownership on spreadsheets, you still do manual transfer with lawyers.
That's what we are fixing at Fairermint by literally making this capital move on chain, and I think you highlighted a lot of points that we have seen evolve in 2026 compared to 2025.
So I do want to get your take on evolving markets and also the infrastructure gaps that you're seeing right now.
Yeah, well, I think that there is a blurring lines between those private and public markets.
And, and this infrastructure gap needs to be fixed because when you start to be um um raising hundreds of billions of dollars, when your company evaluation start to be close to trillions, I mean, you technically and legally expect people like this to like start getting disclosures, starting making sure that we know what's going on.
They have tons of cash flow.
We're not talking of early stage companies anymore in the private market.
We are talking about SpaceX trying to IPO at 1.5 trillion, um.
And I think if we want to have like a robust market in the US, we need to make sure that we come with a solution there.
We need to make sure that those companies, without falling into the whole disclosure system that you have on the public side, we should offer to the people that own a stake in those businesses.
Some form of disclosures.
And you know, there is something super interesting because this infrastructure gap that you see in the US.
And that is Probably the result of the Jobs Act when they moved the threshold for a company to go public from 500 shareholders to 2000.
Well, that created this massive big unicorn market and all the trillion to be locked in the private side.
But for example, China doesn't have this problem.
And in China you see them IPOing Minimax in AI or Unitre in robotics at 56 $7 billion.
That's roughly the same level as Microsoft 40 years ago.
So we have to figure that.
We have to make sure that we offer public investors, firefighters, teachers, like all the people that have a brokerage account in the US an opportunity to capture the same financial upside as China is offering to its public investors now, because we cannot continue having all this wealth created.
Only behind closed doors.
So that's why I think the infrastructure is evolving and the regulator itself is pushing for a mechanism that will just like blur this line once for all.
Yeah, and you brought up the word regulation, and that is something that we're all watching, especially amid some of these concerns regarding private markets.
So you mentioned unicorns, you mentioned SpaceX.
And also OpenAI, that's another name that we're watching, and we're not just talking about billion, $100 billion we're talking about trillion dollar evaluation.
So that is significant.
So when it comes to protections for the consumers, what do you think needs to happen here?
Disclosures is the very basic thing that you expect.
The second thing also that is very important is that since last summer, we started to see the tokenized securities booming.
And there is a big market, and just to be clear, like all those private companies or even the public one, you know, when you are outside of the US accessing that was super hard, um, so it was super interesting to see Kraken, Coinbase, Robinhood pushing this, and they have been building the desertion for years.
So all for them, the US market was a very smart move.
But that being said, There is a concern on what are these people effectively buying, and this is where I think the regulator in the states is very precautionist on that because its role is to guarantee and maintain the investor protection.
So if you don't have disclosure.
If you start to have vehicles that are level 1, level 2, level 3.
When as a retail.
You start to uh try to get a stake in this big unicorns.
And you don't really know where you land on the cap table.
What are your rights?
What are your voting power?
What are your um um uh transfer rules and transfer rights?
Well, that's a big question.
And then also people underestimate who are the admin of all those funds.
Yeah.
What if tomorrow something happened?
And also is the company accepting all these?
Is the company OK to have all these secondaries at play that might impact its own valuation.
That, that is all the question that I think the regulator today is trying to answer with the prism of protecting investors.
Well, Joyce, it was great talking to you here at DAS 2026.
I appreciate your time as well as all of your insights.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
See you.
