> Someone lends you money to exercise your options, you pay them back (at IPO or acquisition)

There is a lot of uncertainty about whether these loan-and-pretend or forward structures violate the spirit of one’s stock option contract, which can and has resulted in forfeiture, and if it involves creating an off-exchange securities swap, illegal since Dodd Frank for non-qualified participants. It was receiving regulatory attention before cryptos distracted everyone. (One firm even got jammed by the SEC early on for structuring illegal swaps.)