Private companies are staying private for longer, and waiting years for an exit has been the norm for early investors. Tokenization is starting to change that by letting people own, split and trade shares in digital form. Kyle Chassé, Co-founder of WLTH, explains how his platform brings private company shares on chain and why a secondary market matters for liquidity. He also reflects on a journey in crypto that began in 2012, why he chose Abu Dhabi for the company’s next chapter, and where he sees AI and crypto meeting.
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How Tokenizing Pre IPO Companies Could Open Private Markets to Everyday Investors
What are your plans for tokenization at WLTH?
Our goal is to democratise access to private equity for these companies that are going to go IPO. We have built innovative infrastructure that brings private shares on chain, tokenizes them, and lets users own those shares in digital form and fractionalise them, creating a secondary market, which is something that has never been done before. Usually when you come into a company at a private stage, a Series A or B, you might have to wait five or ten years for an exit. But on our platform we have had instances where people got into companies like Anthropic or SpaceX early, and after six months there was another funding round and the valuation increased. We had people on our platform who took some of their shares, fractionalised them and sold them on our secondary market to get liquidity sooner. All of this is only enabled through blockchain tokenization and fractionalisation.
How would you distinguish between tokenization and fractionalisation?
Tokenization is taking a real world asset and putting it on a blockchain. Fractionalisation is taking that asset and splitting it up. Say I bought 100 SpaceX shares on the platform and the valuation doubles in six months. Maybe I want to recoup my initial investment but keep some for upside. I can take those hundred shares and fractionalise them into whatever denomination I want, maybe 100 slices of one share each, or two slices of 50 shares each, and then put those on the marketplace and sell them. You can also do the opposite: take your fractional shares and bundle them back into one share again.
You have been in crypto since 2012. How have you seen the space evolve?
In 2012 we were buying Bitcoin at 10 dollars off websites that we had no idea would be around the next week, and most of them were not. Now Bitcoin has become institutionalised, put in a wrapper that sovereigns can invest into, which shows how far we have come. We are in a new era with programmable money, stablecoins and smart contracts, and it is really about upgrading traditional finance onto digital rails, where we can settle instantly, transact much quicker and have a visible, transparent ledger anyone can follow. Bitcoin has had its maturity, and now we are seeing a whole new wave of interest in real world assets on chain.
What is most interesting to institutions at the moment?
Two things. One is taking their entire infrastructure stack and putting it on chain. Most people are now aware that stocks, commodities and everything else will be tokenized and put on digital rails that can trade 24/7, 365. We have already seen some American markets announce that they will be trading 24 hours a day with plans for more to follow. The second is being able to use tokenized real world assets as collateral. A DeFi platform has now announced that it will allow SpaceX shares to be used as collateral for loans. You could not do that before. I want exposure to SpaceX, but I would also like to get a loan against it, so I can keep my upside but also unlock some liquidity. Unlocking liquidity that was previously locked with no way out is what is interesting to everybody.
How do your plans fit with the regulatory framework in Abu Dhabi?
It is a big one and very important for us, as an evolution of what WLTH has been in the global markets into WLTH Global, which will be our company here in Abu Dhabi. ADGM and the FSRA are very mature and serious regulators, but also very innovative. They have had market structure rules since 2018. Compare that with America, which still cannot agree on what the market structure and framework look like. You have a serious regulator that is very progressive, allowing people like us to come in, have a place to domicile and be taken seriously, because everybody knows that if you are in Abu Dhabi under these authorities, they do not play around. It helps all parties understand that there is trust and reliability in these markets.
What is next for digital finance?
I have been in crypto since 2012 and building in it since 2013, but I was always pseudonymous. I was worried about building in America as an American, and I left in 2018 to continue building overseas. I have been looking for a place where I can build fully and transparently, and know that we have the rules of the road to follow and clarity on exactly what we can and cannot do. We are fine with that. We want to work with regulators to build a serious product. What is next, and is just now becoming apparent, is AI and crypto converging. Other than Bitcoin finding its store of value story, the smart contract and programmable money side has not really found a use case yet. One of the clearest now, and BlackRock did a study about it, is AI agents helping you with your financial decisions and managing your wallet. They will be transacting in stablecoins on stablecoin rails and managing your digital assets for you. I think this is probably the best use case we have seen so far for programmable money and blockchain infrastructure.