Fairmint CEO Warns $2B Tokenized-Stock Market Risks Ethereum “Paperwork Crisis”

Fairmint CEO Warns of Digital Paperwork Crisis

Joris Delanoue, chief executive of onchain securities infrastructure provider Fairmint, warned that the tokenized-stock boom, a fast-growing corner of the altcoin economy built on blockchain rails such as Ethereum (ETH), could recreate the settlement breakdown that pushed Wall Street to the edge in the late 1960s. In an interview, Delanoue said the industry has prioritized distribution over ownership records and market infrastructure, raising the risk that exchanges, special-purpose vehicles, token wrappers and proprietary ledgers splinter the official shareholder record as tokenized equities grow. He argued that a token is not the same as equity, but equity can be represented as a token, meaning the same legal safeguards and guarantees must apply when that representation moves onchain. Some tokenized stock products, however, provide only economic exposure to an underlying share rather than legal ownership, leaving investors dependent on intermediaries and creating uncertainty over voting, dividends and claims to assets if an issuer or special-purpose vehicle fails. Tokenized equities now represent a roughly $2 billion market, having climbed from under $500 million at the end of the first quarter, according to market data, though they remain a rounding error next to the more than $100 trillion traditional equities market and far from any all-time high in market share. Fairmint, which is registered with the SEC as a transfer agent, reports processing over $1.6 billion in onchain equity since 2019. Delanoue said the key test is whether the official shareholder register maintained by the issuer recognizes the person holding the token. He called for shared standards and open infrastructure, warning that closed ecosystems and fragmentation will hurt smaller players. The warning echoes the post-crisis redesign of U.S. post-trade infrastructure, when centralized depositories and the Depository Trust Company were created to restore trust. The difference, he said, is that blockchain offers a chance to build a distributed foundation instead of a centralized one, provided the industry agrees on common standards before fragmentation becomes its own crisis.

Anthropic's $2T IPO Faces Data Center Opposition

Separately, Anthropic is preparing for a public listing that investors believe could value the AI company behind Claude at around $2 trillion, but local resistance to AI data centers is emerging as a threat to the offering. Anthropic submitted its IPO paperwork confidentially in June, and the deal could become one of the largest public listings ever. SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, raised $85.7 billion in its own IPO last month, the largest on record, and Anthropic could raise more if current valuations hold. In a Gallup survey released in May, roughly seven in ten U.S. adults said they opposed having AI data centers near their homes, and close to half described their opposition as strong. Only about a quarter of businesses supported local data center projects, according to the same survey. Anthropic needs significantly more computing capacity — servers, graphics processors and electricity — to meet demand for Claude and newer AI products, and it has been pressing infrastructure partners to accelerate development. Updated financials shared with early investors show annualized revenue above $65 billion as of last month, compared with $9 billion at the end of last year. Two investors said the company is likely to highlight year-over-year revenue growth of more than ten times when it pitches the listing. CFO Krishna Rao has faced investor questions on competitive threats, margin pressure from open-weight models and delays in data center construction. Founded in 2021 by CEO Dario Amodei and a group of former OpenAI employees, Anthropic was long seen as trailing OpenAI, but the success of its Claude Code programming product helped revenue climb quickly. Backers see the addressable market for AI services reaching several trillion dollars over time, with AI expected to take on a wide range of office tasks. Anthropic has told early investors it expects its models to keep improving, and executives argue that stronger models will support premium pricing even as rivals cut costs. The IPO prospectus is slated for release in the coming weeks, with share trading expected to follow within months. The IPO also arrives as AI-related crypto tools, from AI crypto wallets to automated agents, draw fresh attention in digital asset markets.

Standards and Compute in Focus

Taken together, the two stories point to a common bottleneck: infrastructure is lagging behind demand. In tokenized equities, the missing piece is a shared, trustworthy record-keeping layer; in AI, it is physical capacity and community consent. Primary-source disclosures from Fairmint and the Gallup survey frame the risk — ownership records and local approval are trailing distribution and valuation. For the crypto market, the tokenized-stock debate is a reminder that altcoin adoption depends on boring back-office infrastructure as much as on trading rails. The next test will be whether the industry adopts shared standards before fragmentation becomes its own crisis, and whether Anthropic's prospectus addresses data-center opposition head-on.