This article was originally published in Alternative Investor.
Private markets have long been the lifeblood of growth-stage and mid-size businesses looking to scale. Private equity alone saw $2.6 trillion in deal value globally in 2025, up by almost a fifth on the year before.
Yet while private markets are seeing a resurgence, their infrastructure still belongs to a bygone era. Settlement cycles are long, liquidity is constrained, and investment opportunities are typically only available to a select few. Markets that finance innovation and economic expansion are themselves constrained by outdated systems. The mismatch is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Rewiring Private Markets through Tokenisation
Beyond the volatility and speculation often associated with digital assets, the underlying technology can unlock financial infrastructure fit for the digital age.
Through tokenisation – representing securities as digital tokens on a blockchain – private markets can operate more efficiently. Smart contracts – the code underpinning digital assets – make asset transfers more streamlined and enable frictionless dividend payments. Compliance is also embedded with built-in whitelisting features.
In effect, tokenisation shifts private markets from fragmented, manual processes to streamlined, automated systems designed for scale.
Expanding Access to Global Capital
The operational gains are only part of the story. Arguably, the most transformative impact of tokenisation in private markets is broadening access.
This is particularly pertinent for emerging markets where access to capital can be costly and constrained. The Bitfinex Securities Latin America Market Inclusion Report found that high start-up costs – with a capital raise of $30-$50 million incurring average fees of 7% – is a real barrier to growth. This, combined with regulatory complexity and low liquidity, make it extremely difficult for businesses to scale, with the ramifications of this being felt in the broader economy.
In this context, efficient private markets are vital, and tokenisation is already delivering impact. For example, ALTERNATIVE, a securitisation fund, has issued four tokenised bonds totalling US$6.2 million-equivalent on Bitfinex Securities since 2023. These have helped to fund SMEs in emerging markets, and since issuance have made 20 coupon payments for a total of more than US$1.1 million USDt, and there are more issuances in the pipeline. These tokenised bonds are providing investors with exposure to real-economy impact investments that might otherwise have been unavailable to them.
Tokenisation also means that a much wider group of investors can access the potential upside of scaling companies. Growth businesses are staying private for longer, with the median age of going public increasing to 11 years in 2025 from just under 7 years in 2014. This means only a very select few are able to capitalise on not just early-stage growth, but some of the most successful, mature and innovative companies in the world.
The combination of fractionalisation – offering smaller, more affordable chunks of an asset – and baked-in compliance could open up these opportunities to retail investors. With stagnating interest rates in developed economies and rampant inflation in many Latin American and other emerging markets, individual investors have the appetite for high-yield opportunities, but are often locked out.
Tokenisation changes this, bridging the gap between opportunity and access in a responsible and compliant way.
From Private to Inclusive
For emerging and growth markets in particular, the efficiencies unlocked by tokenisation could be decisive. Where legacy infrastructure has historically constrained access to global capital, modern digital rails offer a more direct, transparent and cost-effective route to funding.
Tokenisation is therefore more than a technological upgrade. It lays the groundwork for a more connected and inclusive global investment landscape.