Why the $240Bn private secondary market still runs on email

Private secondaries are a large market with a public-market name and a cottage-industry process. Buyers and sellers still find each other over email, agree a price in a spreadsheet and move the paper by hand.

The friction is structural, not technical

The reason is not that nobody built the software. It is that a secondary trade needs three things at once: a counterparty, a price, and the right to transfer. Each one is gated.

Counterparties are hidden because holdings are private. Price is opaque because there is no tape. And transfer is constrained by rights of first refusal, issuer consent and transfer restrictions written into the original documents. Email survives because it is the only tool flexible enough to negotiate all three informally.

What a venue changes

A regulated venue does not remove the gates. It moves them into one place. Eligible participants can see each other, indications of interest form something closer to a price, and the transfer checks run against the actual rights rather than someone’s memory of them.

That is the difference between a market and a mailing list: the rules are enforced by the venue, not reconstructed by the parties every time.

Why it has not happened yet

A venue only works once it is live, permitted and populated. Standing one up means holding the regulatory permissions, the custody and the counterparties together, which is exactly the combination the market has lacked.

The secondary market has not been waiting for a better inbox. It has been waiting for the layer underneath the inbox.