I don't think the direction we are going towards will erode the differentiation between private and public markets. A skill based assessment (required to have s

I don't think the direction we are going towards will erode the differentiation between private and public markets. A skill based assessment (required to have series 7/65/82, other designations like CFA will eventually be included) will be a strong barrier to entry. While those exams may be more or less trivial to many hackernews readers, for the general public they represent a significant investment in time and education. There will also be liquidity differences--even with a broader set of investors--between private and public markets. Thus if a company wants to have liquid equity (which benefits employees) they will need to be public. Additionally, many large institutions have caps on private market investments which are generally smaller than public equity caps. I don't see this changing given liquidity concerns, going public will still be the road to access more institutional capital. Lastly, your Enron example exemplifies the point that fraud will occur, regardless of private or public markets (and regardless if it is audited by an established third party accounting firm. Arthur Anderson signed off on Enron for years, at it took years for a big 4 accounting firm to recognize the fraud committed by Wirecard). On the flipside, public markets have regulatory requirements which make it easier to research, but just because private markets don't require disclosures doesn't mean there is no information to go off of. Investors can still get enough info to make reasonable investment decisions without disclosures following public company requirements. This gives investors the ability to make their own decisions regarding which disclosure standards are sufficient instead of differing to the SEC. In fact, I believe that Private Markets would experience less fraud if the only requirements were education based and not net-worth based,