Stabledash Live · · 27 min
Tokens vs Equity: FAIR's Fundraising OS Replacing Token Rounds
With 
Mark Studholme
Key takeaways
Dapital is raising on FAIR with Binance and EasyLabs as lead investors, one of two projects currently raising on the platform.
Studholme says investors now want equity over tokens because tokens need more buy pressure than sell pressure, and he has seen tokens go to zero while equity in the same companies was acquired.
FAIR lets founders raise equity using stablecoins, with AI agents, a database of over 300,000 investors and curators that vet deal flow.
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Summary
Founder Mark Studholme says crypto founders are choosing equity raises paid in stablecoins over token launches, and he built FAIR to run those raises.
Dapital is raising money on FAIR, the equity fundraising platform founded by Mark Studholme, with Binance and EasyLabs as its lead investors. Studholme says it is one of two projects raising right now, with 10 more deals creating deal rooms and sharing them privately with investors.
Why equity over tokens
Studholme says the idea came from a pattern: a company would raise a token round, the token would go to zero, and the equity in the same company would get acquired. Equity holders walked away with a return, token holders did not. He says investors now demand equity because tokens are hard: 'You need to have more buy pressure than sell pressure.' He cites Hyperliquid as an exception that did well without VCs and so had no early sell pressure.
The demand showed up at ICM.Run, an incubator Studholme worked with, which got about 1,600 applications. He says the team spoke with every project and saw the appetite to raise equity instead of launching tokens.
“A company would raise a token round, the token would go to zero, and the equity in the same company would get acquired. The investors who held equity walked away with a return. The ones who held the token did not.”
Mark StudholmeHow the platform works
On FAIR, founders join for free, create a deal room and raise equity using stablecoins. AI agents look through a founder's X, LinkedIn and Telegram to find investors in their warm network and add them to a pipeline. The company has a database of over 300,000 investors and reports more than 1,200 registered angels and investors across its network. Deals can include 35 sophisticated investors and unlimited accredited investors.
Curators help with deal flow, including La Familia, Lunar Strategy and ICM.Run. Studholme describes FAIR as a competitor to AngelList that is moving onchain.
Regulation and sectors
Studholme calls tokenized equity a gray area: for projects aiming for an acquisition or IPO, having shareholders who have not passed KYC or KYB checks is tricky. He says that if the Clarity Act makes tokens securities, there will be more implications and possibly more opportunities.
He calls space tech the 'Blue ocean' for investors, alongside longevity tech, agtech and AI hardware. He also points to Collector Crypto, which tokenizes physical Pokemon cards that owners can redeem, and says it was doing more volume than Pump.fun.
Studholme points to Y Combinator's first stablecoin investment in April 2026 as a sign that institutional capital is moving toward equity in crypto companies with real cash flows. Next on the platform is Dominion, which plans to launch the first one-to-one backed silver token on Solana.
Bedrock, FAIR, Cursor, and Dominion come up most.
- People
- Mark Studholme
- Drew Rogers
- Zach Fowler
- Companies
- Bedrock
- FAIR
- Cursor
- Dominion
- Meteora
- AngelList
- MetaDAO
- SpaceX
- Pumped Up Fun
- Startup fund
- Binance
- Dapital
- Hyperliquid
- La Familia
- Lunar Strategy
- Numia Finance
- Y Combinator
- Uniswap
- Collector Crypto
- ICM.Run
- Dfns
