This is Capital Signal—timely briefings on what's changing in private markets, wealth structures, and founder behaviour. Playbooks explain the system. Signals track what's shifting.
This Week in 30 Seconds
Three structural shifts are reshaping founder liquidity in 2026:
Crypto compliance becomes automatic. UK's CARF framework now requires exchanges to report all transactions to HMRC. First international data exchanges start 2027. Historical exposure is the real risk.
IPO windows are selective, not open. Renaissance Capital forecasts 200-230 IPOs raising $40-60 billion. But SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic may absorb most investor attention. Everyone else competes for what's left.
Secondaries went mainstream. 46% of PE managers now use GP-led transactions for LP distributions—double last year. Continuation vehicles are expected to represent 20%+ of distributions in 2026.
Crypto's Grey Zone Just Closed
On January 1st, the UK became one of the first major jurisdictions to implement the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework. CARF, as it's called, requires every crypto exchange operating in the UK to automatically report detailed transaction data to HMRC. Not on request. Automatically.
This includes purchase prices, sale prices, profits, and tax residency information for every user. From 2027, HMRC will share this data with tax authorities in 47 other countries.
The era of "I'll sort out my crypto taxes later" is over.
Andrew Park, a tax investigations partner at Price Bailey, put it bluntly: "This is the beginning of the end for crypto investors who thought they could invest and gain from crypto in secrecy."
For founders who've accumulated crypto positions over the years, the implications are immediate. HMRC has already sent 65,000 "nudge letters" to suspected non-compliers in the past year alone. The agency expects CARF to raise £315 million by 2030. That money has to come from somewhere.
The practical concern isn't future compliance. It's historical exposure. Anyone who hasn't been meticulous about declaring crypto gains now faces a paper trail that leads directly to their tax return. And the penalty structure is aggressive: up to 100% of unpaid tax for offshore activity, plus 7.75% interest backdated to when the tax was originally due.
I've spoken with several founders who treated crypto as a separate mental bucket from their "real" wealth. That distinction no longer exists in the eyes of HMRC. Crypto is now functionally identical to a foreign brokerage account.
The action item here isn't complicated: pull complete transaction histories from every exchange and wallet you've touched, reconcile cost basis properly, and consider using HMRC's voluntary disclosure facility if there are gaps. Penalties for voluntary disclosure before an investigation starts are typically 30% lower than waiting for a nudge letter.
One more detail worth noting: the UK extended CARF to cover domestic transactions as well, not just cross-border activity. HMRC will see everything.
The IPO Window Has a Backlog Problem
Meanwhile, in private markets, we're watching something unusual unfold.
Renaissance Capital expects 200-230 IPOs in 2026, raising between $40-60 billion. That's a meaningful recovery from the drought years. But the headline number masks a more interesting dynamic: the companies most likely to go public this year include SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic—potentially the three largest private company listings in history.
SpaceX alone is reportedly targeting a valuation north of $1.5 trillion. If that happens, it would eclipse Saudi Aramco's record IPO. OpenAI is eyeing a $750 billion to $1 trillion valuation. These aren't normal IPOs. They're once-in-a-generation events that could absorb enormous amounts of public market capital.
For founders holding private positions, this creates a curious tension.
On one hand, mega-IPOs can lift the entire market. They generate distributions for early investors and LPs, which creates capital for new commitments. They also establish valuation benchmarks that ripple through late-stage private markets.
On the other hand, these listings may absorb so much investor attention that the "normal" IPO candidates—the $2-5 billion companies that represent most of the backlog—find themselves competing for scraps. Fortune's Term Sheet analysis suggests the window will stay open through Q1 and Q2, then potentially decelerate.
The four-year backlog of IPO-ready tech companies isn't getting any younger. PitchBook notes that VC fundraising fell to its lowest level since 2019 last year, with LPs "wary of VC's lengthening liquidity cycles, as a high number of companies remain private well past traditional timelines."
Hong Kong provided a counterpoint with its AI-driven IPO surge at year end—six listings raising $2.15 billion in December alone, tripling 2024 volumes. For founders with Asia-linked holdings, that's worth watching. When HK windows are active, it tightens valuation discounts even for Western private positions with comparable growth profiles.
Secondaries Are No Longer a Side Show
Here's where the market structure gets interesting.
According to Jefferies' Global Secondary Market Review, global secondary transaction volume hit $103 billion in the first half of 2025—a record. GP-led transactions alone reached $47 billion, up 68% year over year.
These aren't distressed sales. They're engineered liquidity events.
Continuation vehicles have become the mechanism GPs use when they believe in an asset but need to provide distributions to existing LPs. They roll portfolio companies into new vehicles, offer existing investors a cash-out option, and bring in fresh capital from secondary buyers. It's a way to manufacture liquidity without selling to strategic acquirers or waiting for an IPO window.
Dechert's 2026 Global Private Equity Outlook found that 46% of PE managers are now using GP-led secondaries or continuation vehicles to facilitate LP distributions. That's nearly double last year's figure. In Asia-Pacific, 55% plan to increase GP-led activity over the next 24 months. North America sits at 51%. Even EMEA, which has historically been more conservative, shows 43% planning increases.
The drivers are consistent across regions: lucrative opportunities for GPs (61% cited this), greater liquidity demand from LPs (47%), and flexible holding periods for portfolio companies (41%). What's changed is that securing a stapled commitment to a new fund is now a meaningful motivator—37% cite this versus 24% a year ago.
Cambridge Associates expects continuation vehicles to represent at least 20% of PE distributions in 2026, with LPs overwhelmingly opting for the cash-out rather than rolling into new vehicles.
The mechanics matter here. When a GP runs a continuation vehicle, they typically package two to five portfolio companies (71% of recent deals fit this pattern) into a new SPV. Existing LPs get a choice: take cash at the offered price, or roll their stake into the new vehicle alongside fresh secondary capital. The GP continues managing the asset, often with reset economics—new fee structures, new carry waterfalls, new hold periods.
For LPs who take cash, the transaction provides liquidity without requiring the GP to find a strategic buyer or time the IPO market. For those who roll, it's essentially a re-underwriting decision: do you believe this asset, with this GP, under these new terms, still represents attractive risk-adjusted returns?
HarbourVest's 2026 outlook frames this as a permanent shift rather than a temporary phenomenon. "Conventional exits, secondaries, and creative structures are converging to create a more flexible, resilient ecosystem for GPs and LPs alike."
The secondary market is also expanding beyond traditional private equity. Private credit GP-led deals made up less than a third of credit secondaries through H1 2025, but are expected to represent the majority by year end. Infrastructure secondaries are set to break record volumes. The liquidity toolkit is growing.
For founders with private fund exposure, this matters in two ways.
First, the probability of receiving a tender offer or structured liquidity option has increased substantially. If your GP runs a continuation vehicle on a position you hold, the decision becomes binary: take cash at the offered price, or roll into a new vehicle with different economics.
Second, the secondary market is becoming a core portfolio tool rather than an emergency exit. Wellington notes that "secondaries are likely to become a base layer in private market portfolios to offset unexpected primary fund investment return patterns."
The shift from Growth Mode to Allocator Mode that many founders experience post-exit now includes learning the mechanics of secondary markets. It's no longer sufficient to understand M&A and IPO dynamics. The liquidity toolkit has expanded.
What This Means for Your Next Twelve Months
Three things are happening simultaneously.
Tax transparency is increasing. The CARF implementation is just the UK's first move; 75 countries have committed to participate. UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Switzerland join in 2027. The US follows in 2028. Geographic arbitrage on crypto taxation is becoming harder.
IPO windows are selective. The mega-caps will attract enormous attention. Everyone else competes for what's left. Dual-track planning—preparing for both IPO and M&A scenarios—matters more than it did when windows were either clearly open or clearly shut.
Liquidity is being manufactured. If you hold private market positions, expect more tender offers, more GP-led restructurings, and more creative liquidity mechanisms. The question isn't whether these options will appear—it's whether you'll be ready to evaluate them intelligently when they do.
None of this requires panic. But it does require updating mental models that were formed when crypto operated in regulatory grey zones, when IPO windows were binary, and when "exit" meant M&A or IPO and nothing in between.
The liquidity landscape shifted this month. Most people won't notice for another six to twelve months.
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