Companies are staying private longer than before: 12 years on average, up from 4-5 in the 1990s.

That means the most valuable growth phase now happens behind closed doors.

Crypto is building the rails to change that, with SPV-backed tokens, synthetic contracts, and closed-end funds competing to democratize pre-IPO access.

DWF Ventures explores the structural risks, persistent premiums, and the necessary stress tests here.

If you're building, DWF Ventures is looking for projects to support. Reach out here: https://www.dwf-labs.com/ventures

Andrei Grachev on the biggest question for less liquid tokenized RWAs 👆

Two weeks of on-ramps:

→ Charles Schwab opens spot crypto to millions of clients
→ J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Ripple, and Ondo Finance ran a cross-border tokenized Treasury settlement pilot
→ Total RWAs crossed $33B
→ Tokenized Treasuries crossed $15B

The CLARITY Act clearing committee 15-9 is also huge news for the industry - it's the closest crypto has ever been to a comprehensive federal regulatory framework in the U.S.

Every cycle builds rails, but this one is building the on-ramps to match.

Full analysis: https://www.dwf-labs.com/research/eyes-on-the-market-the-on-ramps-are-multiplying

Prediction market positions have real and quantifiable value, but right now, that capital is inert.

Currently, lending protocols face two problems:

→ Positions can collapse to zero instantly at resolution, potentially creating bad debt with no liquidation window
→ Regulatory uncertainty around whether event contracts qualify as legitimate financial instruments

Both barriers have weakened considerably. Kalshi's CFTC win established event contracts as regulated derivatives.

DWF Ventures explores more on the shift from bet to balance sheet.

Non-professional traders using AI are not necessarily guaranteed success.

Andrei Grachev explains in a discussion with RWA Week 👆

-13.4% → 40.5% → 49.1%

The Hiive 50 secondary market index tracking the top 50 pre-IPO companies has gone from underperforming the S&P 500 to nearly tripling it in two years.

What changed is that companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are approaching IPOs at record valuations, and the average time to go public has stretched to 12 years, up from 4-5 in the 1990s.

Hiive's average transaction size topped $1M last year.

The transaction size shows that the market exists, but it's built for institutional buyers. Retail demand is spilling onto on-chain alternatives.

More from DWF Ventures here.

Tokenized stocks, private equity, VC assets, all moving onchain.

May 2026 snapshot 👆

The first real-world Bitcoin transaction.

16 years later, the network looks a little different.

Different clients face different risks in the DeFi and RWA market.

Andrei Grachev breaks it down 👆

Stablecoin rails are being used, and Apr 2025 to Apr 2026 growth tells the story.

Three structurally different models for pre-IPO market exposure exist:

1️⃣ SPV-backed tokens: claim on shares, redeemable post-IPO, but redemption requires selling on private secondary markets with no guaranteed timeline

2️⃣ Synthetic contracts: no backing, oracle-pegged, permissionless, but can be exited at market subject to secondary liquidity mechanisms

3️⃣ Closed-end funds: SEC-registered or fund-structured, but with direct equity or SPV backing, and higher fees (up to 3.6% annually)

DWF Ventures breaks down the tradeoffs here.

Meet the team! Andrej Sazonov, Head of Business Development at DWF Labs, will be at Proof of Talk in Paris on June 2-3, 2026.

If you’re looking to connect around OTC, liquidity provision, investments, or partnerships, we have a short form for meeting requests: https://dwf.is/meeting

Due to limited availability, submissions will be reviewed based on suitability, and we’ll follow up with selected parties to confirm meetings.

Looking forward to connecting with you 🤝

Pre-IPO tokens on PreStocks and Ventuals are trading at persistent premiums above last known private market valuations.

Historical IPO valuations land roughly 25% above raise. Investors who entered at a 20-40% premium have a narrow margin before trades turn negative.

There are also other risks:

→ Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have condemned unauthorized tokenized exposure

→ Fund structures bundle exposure with no control over individual allocations

→ At IPO, there's no guarantee of instant liquidity. SPV-held shares require a separate liquidation process

DWF Ventures elaborates more in their article here.

Human logic is still a crucial part of utilizing AI for trading.

Andrei Grachev explains why in a panel with RWA Week 👆

Andrei Grachev on the formula for project success with Cointelegraph's Robert Baggs 👆

Catch up with us in our May recap 👇

1. Andrei Grachev, Managing Partner, published an article on the DeFi vs. CeDeFi debate, sharing that full automation isn't the endgame - risk management still matters three cycles in. Read more here.

2. Andrei was quoted in CCN on what the market needs in the next stage of tokenization and RWA adoption.

3. At a panel hosted by RWA Week, Andrei covered AI agents in trading, why human logic still sets the floor for risk management, and what the future of AI in crypto looks like. Listen here.

4. DWF Ventures published "The Pre-IPO Gold Rush," examining tokenized pre-IPO markets, the structural differences between existing models, and the risks most platforms haven't solved for.

5. We published Eyes on the Market Vol. 12 - "The On-Ramps Are Multiplying." The GENIUS Act passed, stablecoin infrastructure is scaling, and the regulatory framework is catching up to what builders have already shipped.

6. Falcon Finance launched fUSD, a GENIUS-ready stablecoin, in partnership with Anchorage. The stablecoin stack is expanding. More information about the partnership here.

7. We're on top of market growth and developments. Catch some of the highlights from May:
- GENIUS and Clarity Act timeline
- The story behind what people are buying onchain
- Stablecoin growth and usage
- Tokenized stocks market expansion
- Tokenized private credit market overview

The work compounds. See you in June 🛠

Andrei Grachev on the thesis behind Falcon Finance's fUSD in Korea Economic TV (한국경제)👆

Stablecoin adoption has gone through three distinct phases:

1️⃣ (2019 - 2021): Speculative bootstrap
👉 Velocity stayed within the range of 24-28x as usage grew in tandem with capital inflows

2️⃣ (2022 - 2024): Stress test
👉 Velocity peaked at 34.2x during Terra/FTX as users de-risked
👉 New capital in 2024 remained mostly idle

3️⃣ (2025 - present): Real-world adoption
👉 Transaction volume has completely outpaced supply growth and velocity has surged from 39.3x to 49.7x
👉Remittances and payments are now the fastest-growing segment

$320B in supply and $6.64T in year-to-date volume show that the dollars are working.

However, Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs are telling a different story.

We unpack it all in our new edition of Eyes on the Market: https://www.dwf-labs.com/research/stablecoin-velocity-hits-record-497x-as-real-economic-usage-surges

Stablecoin market cap hitting $320B is the number dominating headlines. However, the full picture requires looking beyond market cap and at stablecoin velocity as well.

Stablecoin velocity has reached an annualized rate of 49.7x, which means every tokenized dollar in circulation is changing hands ~50 times per year.

$320B supply × 49.7x velocity = $6.64T in real, filtered transaction volume since the start of 2026 (via Visa and Allium Labs, bots excluded).

For context, stablecoin velocity peaked at 34.2x during the stress of Terra/FTX in 2022. The current reading of 49.7x is nearly 50% above that prior record.

The surge in velocity reflects a genuine expansion of real-world utility beyond speculation.

More in our full report here.

Most AI agents have a major design flaw. Missing memory.

Every session starts from 0. They don’t learn. They don’t improve.

Nous Research built Hermes with memory in mind. It self-improves the more you use it. Compounding its capabilities.

It’s now the most-used agent by token volume. 2.2x that of OpenClaw.

The latest piece by DWF Ventures explains why Hermes has pulled ahead, how its memory architecture works, and how it stacks up against the alternatives: here.