Changpeng Zhao (창펑 자오), founder of Binance, forecast that traditional initial public offering models will eventually move to blockchain. He argued that tokenising a public offering would let companies secure 24-hour liquidity, link smoothly with decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols and directly access funds from retail investors worldwide.

On Sept. 8 (local time), blockchain outlet U.Today reported that Zhao cited on-chain infrastructure for real-world assets (RWA) as the basis for the view. The total market capitalisation of the RWA market is $33.6 billion, of which tokenised stocks and ETFs account for about $3.0 billion. Binance's bStocks platform accounts for 21 percent of that segment at $627.5 million, with 981,215 holders. By trading turnover, Circle Internet Group leads with $103.6 million, followed by SpaceX with $63.4 million.

Still, the tokenised stock market remains small compared with traditional U.S. markets. The market capitalisation of the U.S. stock market exceeds $55 trillion, and the New York Stock Exchange alone posts average daily trading value of $100 billion to $150 billion.

Alongside Zhao's forecast, pre-IPO trading in Anthropic is also surging. Anthropic, developer of Claude, is set to hold an official roadshow in mid-October 2026. As it is said to have reached annualised revenue of $65 billion as of late summer and posted its first operating profit, prices of pre-IPO derivatives traded in Web3 have also risen sharply since June.

In Binance's traditional finance perpetual futures market, Anthropic's perpetual futures contract (ANTHROPICUSDT) traded at 2,012.50 USDT, with daily volume of $21.1 million. The asset's price fell to 1,300 USDT in July and then recovered all of the decline to hit a record high.

On decentralised exchange (DEX) Hyperliquid, the ANTH-USDC contract traded at $2,157.3, up 7.78 percent over 24 hours. Open interest stood at $22.5 million and daily trading value came to $15.9 million. Combining buying interest on the two exchanges implies an expected valuation reflected by the market of about $2 trillion for Anthropic.

Still, a barrier remains in linking such markets to traditional finance markets due to their legal nature. Exchanges specify that pre-IPO derivatives are "pure synthetic contracts" based on price expectations. They are not directly linked to the actual share issuer and do not provide voting rights to investors before maturity.

Trading in pre-IPO derivatives ends automatically on the listing day and is settled based on the actual opening share price set on a traditional exchange. The fact that tens of millions of dollars in trading continues around the clock on Binance and Hyperliquid about a month before an official IPO shows the boundary between traditional IPOs and blockchain markets is blurring.