What Tokenization Means for SMEs and Private Companies
How the next wave of digital finance is empowering the backbone of the economy.
Finance Is Changing. But Not Just for Giants
For years, blockchain has been seen as the playground of large institutions and retail traders. But one important group often gets overlooked in these discussions: small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs).
SMEs make up over 99% of all businesses in the EU, employing more than 83 million people and generating over half of Europe’s GDP. In other words, they are the economy.
Yet when it comes to capital markets, these companies are often locked out. Private fundraising is slow, opaque, and costly. Managing shareholders involves endless legal paperwork. And liquidity? Almost nonexistent unless the business is acquired or goes public.
Tokenization and native issuance change that.
The Challenge: Private Companies Are Locked Out
Traditional capital markets were built for giants not growth-stage companies.
- Listing on a stock exchange is prohibitively expensive.
- Private placements require lawyers, intermediaries, and months of due diligence.
- Secondary markets for private shares barely exist.
For Europe’s 24 million SMEs, these barriers stifle growth and innovation.
The Solution: Turning Shares into Digital Securities
Tokenization and issuance let companies represent (or natively issue) real-world assets like equity or debt - as digital tokens on-chain.
On Dusk, these tokens are regulated, privacy-preserving securities, allowing for:
- Instant transferability between verified investors
- Automated compliance (KYC/AML/transfer restrictions)
- Programmable dividends and voting rights
- Real-time ownership tracking
- Lower issuance and management costs
It’s finance as code, giving smaller companies the same capital efficiency that large institutions take for granted and allowing more people to invest in early-stage companies.
Privacy and Compliance Can Coexist
Dusk ensures confidentiality without compromising regulation. In fact, privacy is necessary for compliance.
Through cryptography, companies can prove transactions meet legal requirements without exposing sensitive data.
That means a company can remain compliant, access financial resources, and take advantage of the speed and efficiency of blockchain.
Why Dusk
Dusk was built to bridge the gap between TradFi and DeFi, and to blur that line until you can trade regulated assets with the same ease as you can trade digital ones.
Our tech is purpose-built for regulated, privacy-first on-chain finance.
Whether you’re a fintech platform, a corporate service provider, or an SME looking to modernize, Dusk provides the infrastructure to issue, manage, and trade tokenized securities securely and legally.
The Future of Private Markets
SMEs aren’t a cute niche, they’re the backbone of the global economy.
As tokenization becomes mainstream, we’ll move from a world of paper shares and PDFs to one of digital ownership, instant compliance, and global investor access.
Dusk is here to make that as easy as possible.
