Crypto Bear Market Startup Guide Part 1: Pre-IPO Stock Token Price Spread Market

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Author｜Wenser (@wenser 2010) Crypto Bear Market Startup Guide Part 1: Pre-IPO Stock Token Price Spread Market

Not long ago, Mysten Labs CEO evan.sui shared his views on the “bear market”. He mentioned that he does not agree with the notion that “bear markets are great, keep building.” In fact, bear markets are not “great”; packaging them as beneficial for everyone overlooks the real costs (such as discouraging builders and users). Many retail investors and excellent teams face cash flow crises and are forced to exit, ultimately harming the long-term development of the 加密业。.

However, data evidence contradicts this view. A report released by Lattice VC in October 2024 showed that at that time, over 80% of 加密 startups that announced seed-round funding during the 2022 bear market were still building. In other words, if project teams can maintain relative stability in personnel and funding, a bear market can indeed be more conducive to project development. The reasons might be that during a bear market, project teams focus more on product development and experience optimization; or perhaps a bear market hones a project’s ability to survive through various challenges. In short, being in a crypto bear market might allow determined entrepreneurial projects to find opportunities in adversity and carve out their own path to development.

In light of this, we will explore the potential employment tracks and project directions in this cycle through a series of articles titled “Crypto Bear 市场 Startup Guide.” If crypto projects are born and grow rapidly in the future as a result, Odaily also welcomes project teams to discuss cooperation.

Today, let’s first discuss one of the hottest potential entrepreneurial directions besides prediction markets—the pre-market price spread market for tokenized stocks.

The Real Demand for Pre-市场 代币ized Stock Markets: Platform Differentiation and Liquidity Bridges

As an intermediary bridge connecting the crypto market with traditional financial markets, tokenized stock trading platforms have not only attracted high attention and active participation from crypto projects but have also seen involvement from global leading securities platforms like Nasdaq and the New York Stock 交流. Their aim is to capture incremental markets while further activating liquidity in traditional financial markets.

Furthermore, it’s not just listed crypto-related stocks that are undergoing tokenization and on-chain contract transformation; many popular concept stocks that have not yet conducted IPOs are also highly sought after by both crypto and traditional financial markets, giving rise to several pre-IPO stock tokenization trading platforms.

Considering that the capital market this year is about to witness a wave of U.S. stock listings for a series of companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX (xAI), Kalshi, Polymarket, OKX, and Kraken—spanning AI model companies, commercial aerospace firms, prediction market platforms, and crypto exchanges—there is no doubt that 2026 is destined to be a “big year for IPOs.”

Against the backdrop of a continuously declining crypto market with occasional rebounds and a consistently rising stock market, the popularity of the stock pre-market trading market further supports the above view—there is strong demand from both crypto and traditional financial markets for pre-market trading of hot concept stocks.

This is precisely the main reason for the emergence of pre-market stock trading platforms like PreStocks, Jarsy, and Tessera. Moreover, compared to traditional financial market pre-market trading venues like Hiive and Nasdaq Private Market, crypto pre-market trading markets offer more flexible trading methods, purchase amounts, and entry barriers, along with relatively higher premiums, which attracts enthusiastic user participation.

However, just as the same token can have different prices on different exchanges, before mechanisms like oracles are introduced into the stock pre-market, regardless of the reason, we can clearly see that different platforms have certain price spreads for the same underlying stock mentioned above.

Based on this information, we can make a somewhat bold judgment—the crypto market still lacks one or more “bridge platforms between stock pre-market trading markets.”

This might be a necessary step in advancing stock tokenization and pre-market stock tokenization—a unified, comprehensive platform covering pre-market trading in both traditional financial markets and crypto markets.

Next, we will use the two leading prediction market platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket (which recently sought $20 billion in financing), and SpaceX (xAI) (valued at $1.25 trillion) as examples to explore the feasibility and real demand for this “entrepreneurial direction.”

Comparing Pre-Market Price Spreads Across PreStocks, Jarsy, Tessera: Maximum Spread Rate Exceeds 50%, Price Difference Up to Nearly $150

Kalshi Pre-Market Spread: Up to $148, Spread Rate Around 37%

Taking the Kalshi pre-market as an example, its prices on different platforms are as follows—

On the PreStocks platform, the pre-market price for the tokenized stock is around $397; (Compared to the $369 mentioned in our article “Kalshi Trading Volume Hits New Highs, What’s a Reasonable Pre-IPO Price?” one month ago, this represents an increase of nearly $30, a rise of 7.6%)