Why wrappers matter

Instruments that transform complex, individualized value into standardized, tradeable claims are rewarded by markets. These instruments are known as wrappers. They establish rules about what matters, who can possess it, how it settles, which rights are acquired, and when disagreements end. Each contemporary boom employed a novel wrapper that expanded access to previously unheard-of value. Futures codified the lesson learned the hard way from tulip contracts. Geographical distances were covered by railroads, and investor claims on distant rights of way were standardized by initial public offerings. The internet scaled venture capital (VC) as a risk-covering strategy in the 1990s. On-chain wrappers in ERC-20 tokens and, yes, memecoins were made available in the 2010s. Equity-backed tokens, which make private company value comparable, compliant, and liquid on neutral rails, will be the next wrapper. Rule-sets, not hype, are the source of legitimacy. Bespoke deals are outcompeted by standards.

Historical cases

Tulips → futures

Holland learned about the excitement and limitations of unofficial promises in the seventeenth century. Bulb trading took place during the winter of 1636–1637 using forward contracts that promised delivery in the future, but no bulbs were actually traded. Courts viewed those unwritten commitments as voidable bets and refused to enforce them when the market crashed in February 1637. Proposed remedies, such as paying a nominal fee to terminate contracts, were never established as legally binding. Because there was no uniform wrapper to net exposures or margin positions, informal, bilateral credit and unclear enforceability transformed speculative enthusiasm into social hostility.

Grain was the first to be standardized two centuries later. Following years of chaotic forwards, the Chicago Board of Trade introduced standardized futures in 1865. They combined increasingly formal clearing functions, which by the 1880s had developed into clearinghouses, with contract grades, fixed sizes, and formal margin rules. A disorganized network of bilateral trust was transformed into a multilateral netting machine by these regulations. Instead of relying solely on reputation, two working men from totally different states, such as an Iowa farmer and a New York miller, could hedge each other using the book of a central, reliable counterparty. To put it another way, futures converted crop risk into enforceable and fungible claims.

Neither a new hedge nor a new flower was the key enabler. It was a specification. Grain became fungible across warehouses with the introduction of grading systems in the late 1850s, allowing for the support of trading through warehouse receipts and delivery standards. Central clearing could expand after standardized delivery methods and verifiable quality were established. A wrapper's ability to collapse disparate elements into a contract that can be compared, margined, and settled is its power.

Railroads → IPOs

A prime example of how a new technology imposes a capital-raising standard was Britain's Railway Mania in the 1840s. Large sums of money were invested in joint-stock railway companies. Before the crash, railway securities listings on the London exchange nearly tripled between 1843 and 1845. The mania revealed the need for uniform disclosure, accounting, and governance for mass-owned businesses, but it also funded rights of way and tangible necessities like iron rails that permanently remapped commerce. Joint-stock shares served as a vehicle through which scattered investors could subscribe to the same freight revenue promise.

The extent of the mania was nationwide. The amount of capital raised during the 1840s and 1860s waves was in the mid-teens percent of GDP, which is equivalent to hundreds of billions of pounds in today's currency. The formation of tradable corporations was made easier by legal changes such as the repeal of the Bubble Act in 1825 and new railway company statutes. The point is not romance about rail but rather institutional plumbing: the rights and obligations of the joint-stock IPO were standardized by statute and exchange practice, making it an instrument that anyone could subscribe to.

1990s internet → VC funds

An instrument that could repeatedly finance negative-cash-flow experiments with staged governance and optionality was required for the internet boom. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the limited-partnership venture fund - which had been improved upon in the 1980s - became the standard wrapper. In 2003, the NVCA started disseminating free, industry-standard legal documents, turning custom diligences into models. Term sheets evolved from multi-month one-time events to a series of schedules with adjustable variables. Stated differently, the wrapper became more industrialized.

Additionally, the fund wrapper focused measurement. Between 1990 and 2020, employment at VC-backed companies nearly doubled, and Cambridge Associates and others established benchmarks over thousands of funds. a definite indication that the wrapper was successful outside of tech niches. Dollars flow and legal tooling automatically follow when a structure provides allocators with repeatability and comparability.

2010s crypto → tokens and memecoins

With the introduction of Ethereum's ERC-20 standard in 2015, developers now have a common token interface. Custody, exchanges, and wallets could all be integrated once and support multiple. The 2017 ICO wave was sparked by that standard. An on-chain practice of treating code as a distribution channel was started, and about 4.9 billion dollars were raised. Regardless of how one views 2017, the wrapper performed flawlessly: a single interface produced a network effect for tooling and liquidity.

The data shows the network effect. By the end of 2024, over 216 million distinct addresses had cataloged nearly 1.94 billion ERC-20 trades and over 1.1 million ERC-20 tokens. Stablecoins, DeFi governance tokens, and pure memes are among the tokens, demonstrating the wrapper's versatility. ERC-20 made digital claims readable by infrastructure, much like grain grades did for commodity hedging.

Why standards beat bespoke - transaction costs, clearing, transparency and network effects

A wrapper cuts down on the costs of negotiation. In the past, OTC derivatives needed long, custom contracts for each pair of counterparties. The ISDA Master Agreement, which was first published in 1987 and updated in 1992 and 2002, set standards for representations, events of default, netting, and collateral support annexes. This made it possible for short confirmations to be used in future trades. That template helped the global swaps market grow. Fewer custom terms mean faster execution and less legal cost per dollar of risk transferred.

By clearing, a wrapper lowers the risk of a counterparty. After the crisis, reforms moved standardized OTC contracts to central counterparties because multilateral netting and margining stop bilateral contagion. By 2018, about two-thirds of OTC interest rate derivatives were cleared through a central clearinghouse. This is a big increase from 2009, when only about one-fifth were. Clearing is a set of rules that takes into account the unique risk of default in margin models and variation settlement.

A wrapper makes things more clear and narrows spreads. Standardized posting of instruments and pre-trade transparency narrow bid-ask spreads. This happens because they make it cheaper to search for information and because there is an imbalance of information in market-making. On average, exchange-traded transparency is better than fragmented OTC quotes. Research on corporate bonds and over-the-counter (OTC) markets shows that when pre-trade transparency is higher and dealers can hedge their inventories in standardized instruments, the spreads are lower. (Chen 2017; Lewis and Schwert 2021).

The ETF is a great example of how wrapper economics works. The creation-redemption mechanism lets authorized people take advantage of differences between the price of an ETF and the assets it holds. This, on the other hand, makes secondary markets more stable and pools liquidity. In 2019, SEC Rule 6c-11 made an ETF rule set official. It required daily portfolio transparency and allowed custom baskets as long as they were written down. That standardization happened at the same time as a record number of people using ETFs and more liquidity in fixed-income ETFs. The wrapper made it easier for people to get in and combined all of the rules for exemptive relief into one.

Liquidity focuses on places where contracts are most similar. When everything else is the same, fewer line items with the same terms mean deeper order books and tighter spreads than when there are a lot of different OTCs. This isn't a vibe claim; it's how every exchange grew: with a standard lot size, tick size, settlement, and disclosure. Make everything the same. The wrapper makes the network effects that software, custody, and market makers can use to their advantage. 

Why this matters

When equity is fragmented across many bespoke contracts, liquidity thins and spreads widen.

By wrapping them into a single Street Standard token, liquidity concentrates, depth builds, and trading costs collapse. Add transparency, a live quote board and standardized terms, and spreads compress even further:

The next wrapper - equity‑anchored tokens for private markets

Private markets are large, slow, andopaque. By the middle of 2023, private markets' AUM had grown to about $13.1 trillion, or almost 20% since 2018. There was about $3.7 trillion in dry powder. But after the freeze in 2022, exit markets were still full. The money raised from U.S. IPOs in 2022 was the lowest in more than thirty years. There was a small recovery in 2023, but the backlog is still there. The result is that both LPs and founders have trouble getting their money out and their time creeps up.

Secondary markets are growing, but they are still negotiated and happen in bursts: In 2023, global secondaries went over $100 billion for the third year in a row. They went up even more in the first half of 2024, but discounts and custom terms are still features, not bugs. The last piece is a wrapper that makes early-stage company exposure into standardized, tradable units that can be programmed to follow the rules.

Tokenization is moving from pilots to production in cash-like funds. BlackRock's BUIDL, a tokenized U.S. dollar liquidity fund, started in March 2024 and had more than $1 billion in assets under management (AUM) by March 2025. Franklin Templeton's on-chain U.S. Government Money Fund keeps growing and sharing on-chain data. Regulators and central banks have begun to test and accept tokenized rails. For example, MAS's Project Guardian and BIS workstreams are making interop venues. These aren't memes; they're existing institutions using on-chain wrappers for assets that follow the rules. 

Predictions differ in size, but they all point in the same direction: McKinsey's base case says that the market cap of tokenized financial assets will be about $2 trillion by 2030, with a chance of going up to $4 trillion. Boston Consulting Group's 2022 study of illiquid asset tokenization put the potential at 16 trillion dollars. This range shows how quickly standards come out and where regulators stand on harmonization. The lesson from ETFs is that when a set of rules makes primary issuance easier and secondary settlement more uniform, people will start using them.

Street as the standard: how the wrapper works, what makes it different, and why timing is now favorable

Street’s wrapper begins with a blunt fact: tokens tied directly to equity are securities. To avoid dragging the entire cap table under securities law, Street uses a three-entity separation.

• Street OpCo (Delaware) provides advisory and brand services but never holds equity or issues tokens. This keeps Street itself outside securities exposure.

• Startup OpCo (Delaware or local jurisdiction) runs the business. When the startup joins Street, it issues a negotiated equity stake directly to the offshore foundation, not to Street.

• Offshore Foundation / DAO (Cayman or Bahamas) holds that equity stake, issues the project’s $STARTUP tokens, and manages the treasury.

The exit mechanic is straightforward: if the startup exits, proceeds flow into the DAO treasury. The DAO may then vote to airdrop USDC pro-rata to tokenholders. Because this distribution is discretionary and voluntary, not contractual, the tokens avoid guaranteeing profits and therefore sidestep the Howey test. Tokenholders receive speculative upside and community rewards, but never equity rights or enforceable claims.

This wrapper delivers three major benefits for founders:

1. Funding via distribution: Secondary trading activity generates fees of roughly 50-150 basis points, which flow back to the project. That means founders can finance operations from trading volume instead of constant dilution. The model has already been validated - Kled AI raised about $2 million in less than two months purely from trading fees.

2. Broader reach with compliance: Because tokens are distributed through allow-listed wallets and jurisdictional gating, founders can reach far beyond accredited-only channels while still respecting regulatory boundaries.

3. Transparent cap tables: Startup ownership is mirrored on-chain, with treasury holdings and token supply auditable in real time, giving investors visibility that is rare in private markets.

For investors, the wrapper offers three complementary advantages:

1. Liquid access to innovation: Exposure to startups that would normally be locked up for 5-10 years becomes tradable within days.

2. On-chain transparency: Treasury equity, token supply, and distribution policies are visible and verifiable.

3. Optional upside: It makes a clear distinction between speculative upside and enforceable equity claims by linking any distributions to DAO decisions instead of a contract. That difference is a big part of the SEC's 2019 digital asset framework, which looks at the economic reality of a "investment contract" instead of labels.

Timing is important. The structure of the crypto market has changed from launching tokens out of thin air to stories about making money and fees. Tokenized funds from existing companies have proven that these rails work. The use of ETFs shows that a clear set of rules for creation and redemption, along with openness, can free up trillions. In this setting, an equity-backed token that is legally sound, operationally clear, and culturally crypto-native is not a gimmick; it is the next wrapper. 

Why Street’s wrapper now captures the rails

• Tech rails: Public chains and custody now support permissioned tokens, programmable controls, and ledgers that are easy to audit. Tokenized money market funds show that settlement, reconciliation, and wallet UX can work on a large scale.

  
  

• Capital rails: Liquidity looks for standard vehicles. This is shown by the movement of money from mutual funds to ETFs and the flow of money into ETFs. Once standardized, equity-anchored tokens can turn trading fees into cash flow for new businesses and give investors a way to invest that is easy to get out of.

  
  

• Governance rails: The SEC's 2019 framework gives us a way to test digital assets. Howey is still the law. Street's architecture is meant to avoid contractual profit rights and limit distribution through optional DAO actions. This puts it outside the classification of investment contracts while still following rules like allow-lists and geofencing.

  
  

• Culture: Founders and users now agree that tokens are a way to distribute. There is no longer a stigma around "scam coin." Instead, the focus is on clear economics and community alignment. A wrapper that clearly adds fees, shows the state of the cap table, and encodes compliance is exactly what people want right now.

Lindy check

What is old: investors like standardized documents and a market structure that lowers the cost of negotiations and lets professionals manage risk through clearing and netting. ISDA, exchange rule books, and IPO listing standards all show that Lindy forces prefer contracts that are simple and can be repeated. 

What is new: instant, worldwide settlement with programmable compliance and cap tables that are always up to date on the blockchain. ERC-20 made the cost of issuing tokens almost nothing and made a long tail of assets. Tokenized funds show that established companies are using the rails for regulated products. Equity-anchored tokens combine these features with equity discipline.

Conclusion - the market rewards rule‑sets

Tulip forwards fell apart because they weren't based on rules that could be enforced. Every great market standard started as a way to deal with chaos. Futures turned quality grades and margins into a way to settle. Railroads forced the mass-owned company into a standard IPO wrapper. Model docs made venture funds easy to read and repeat on the internet. Ethereum's ERC-20 made code into a layer for distribution and integration. Now is the time for private markets to get a wrapper that adds equity discipline to chain-native liquidity without having to deal with all the problems that come with public company reporting. If they are defined by rule sets, equity-anchored tokens do that. Street's design does this by separating entities, keeping cap tables auditable on-chain, using allow-lists to encode compliance, and using trading-fee flow to fund operations instead of constant dilution. Standards are better than custom-made ones because they reduce friction, draw in tools, and concentrate liquidity. That's how wrappers win.

This article is informational only and not legal, tax, or investment advice.