Ondo launches Private Markets: what a pre-IPO note means for your payout and your tax bill

Ondo Finance launched a platform on October 6, 2026 that makes stakes in companies tradable before they reach the stock market. What trades are tokenised notes, not shares; their value is tied to the price of one common share in the company concerned. Payment comes only once that company has completed a listing, is taken over, or ten years have passed. For anyone holding ONDO or considering a purchase, a new line of business is thereby written into the project, and at the same time a product that meets different rules in Germany than a coin does. One thing at a time, because three questions hang on this launch that the press release does not answer: what do you legally buy? Who may buy at all? And when does money come back? A note is a debt instrument: a paper by which an issuer promises the buyer a payment. At Ondo Private Markets the size of that payment follows the value of one common share in the company the note refers to. Ondo calls that company the reference company. Ondo's product page states the difference from a share itself, and plainly: the tokens are “not themselves stocks” and give their holders no rights to hold or receive the underlying assets. Buying such a note th...