Crowdfunding platform Republic announced plans to offer “Mirror Tokens” that track the performance of unlisted unicorns including SpaceX and Anthropic. The security tokens will be available to global retail investors, including the US, for as little as $50. Republic has backing from major investors including Morgan Stanley, Founders Fund and Galaxy.
The offering targets smaller investors seeking access to high growth startups typically reserved for institutions and wealthy individuals. While these companies remain unlisted, their shares trade on private secondary markets, with those valuations used to price the tracker tokens.
Republic emphasizes that tokens like rSpaceX are not issued by SpaceX and do not represent company equity. Instead, they are loan notes issued by RepublicX with uncertain repayment dates. Token holders can redeem their investments if the underlying company goes public or gets acquired, and will receive accumulated dividends. Otherwise, investors face a one year lockup period before attempting to trade on Republic’s secondary market through its planned acquisition of INX token exchange.
Regulatory framework and risk concerns
The structured product nature combined with a relatively small issuer and limited claims significantly increases investment risk beyond typical unicorn exposure. Republic co-founder and CEO Kendrick Nguyen told the Wall Street Journal that the company “plans to hold shares of or have some other exposure to the underlying security,” though the company’s website clarifies this remains a “testing the waters” crowdfunding offer rather than a final proposal.
Nguyen, a former securities lawyer, plans to use a 2012 JOBS Act provision allowing smaller US firms to raise $5 million annually through retail crowdfunding. Notably, the raised funds flow to RepublicX rather than the unicorn companies themselves, potentially limiting total issuance across all unicorn tokens to $5 million.
The approach resembles crypto exchange Kraken’s May announcement of xStocks, developed with Swiss based Backed to offer tokens tracking US listed stocks for non US retail investors. Backed also offers debt tokens rather than equity, but provides more mature documentation, explicitly stating it holds underlying stock collateral on a 1:1 basis and specifying custodians, though regular disclosure of holdings would strengthen investor confidence.
