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| By Dawn Pennington |
SpaceX landed on the Nasdaq Friday, after operating as a private company for almost a quarter-century.
Shares quickly took off, trading as high as $176.52 intraday.
Elon Musk owes the crypto community at least a small thank-you for this $75B debut.
Retail investors had to wait until Friday to become part of America’s biggest IPO. (Saudi Aramco still holds the world’s record, at $79B.)
Retail got an unusually large share, too, as SpaceX set aside about 30% of its public shares for everyday investors.
Just in time for the pool of potential investors to widen, as Fidelity slashed its $100,000 balance requirement for IPO trading to $2,000.
Meanwhile, crypto investors had the chance to buy SpaceX-linked perpetual futures before the big day …
Which seems to have helped lead price discovery before a single SPCX share changed hands.
How was that possible?
Crypto traders in SpaceX-linked perpetual futures were actively pricing in the IPO ahead of the debut.
A perpetuals exchange is where traders can bet on crypto prices. If your bet that the price rises or falls is right, then you can earn money. (Or lose it if you don’t.)
According to a June 11 (day before IPO) report from Arkham1, “The SPCX HIP-3 contract implies a valuation of $2.01 trillion and a share price of $154.”
The SPCX-USDC perpetual contract on Hyperliquid traded as high as $176 — about 30% above the $135 IPO price — before easing back to around $172 before SpaceX rang the Nasdaq opening bell on June 12.
Looking back, we now know that shares opened at $150 and closed 11% higher.
In other words, the “perps” correctly identified the day’s high and backed off that price.
Again, before a single share changed hands!
More impressive may be the volume.
CNBC reported that more than $322.5 million worth of these contracts changed hands in a single 24-hour window.
And open interest climbed above 293 million.
These contracts, which don't expire and are primarily traded by leverage-seeking crypto investors, became one of the market's most active proxies for pre-IPO sentiment on SpaceX.
What’s since happened to all those bets?
These contracts are cash-settled derivatives.
When the landmark IPO happened, active positions on Hyperliquid automatically became standard stock-linked perpetual futures.
So, not stock, but rather a real-world asset (RWA) perpetual that tracks the live SPCX price.
Perps weren’t the only signposts.
Traders on Polymarket bet that SpaceX would close above a $2 trillion market cap after its IPO.
It sits just above that, at $2.1 trillion.
And just like perps, the betting markets trade even while the Nasdaq is closed.
Which gives us insight into the second and third giga-IPOs of 2026 …
Now, the crypto community is shifting its attention to Anthropic and OpenAI.
Hyperliquid and Polymarket are back in the mix.
TradeXYZ, Hyperliquid’s decentralized trading interface that handled the SpaceX IPO, is expected to handle the next big IPOs.
Pre-IPO perpetual contracts are being rolled out on OKX, Binance Futures and Crypto.com.
One thing is clear …
The Anthropic and OpenAI pre-IPO perp markets are open and active.
And they just got a major credibility boost from the SpaceX centralized exchange fiasco.
Polymarket, meanwhile, is not only letting traders bet on Anthropic and OpenAI’s potential valuation …
But more than $150,000 has already been placed on which one they think might go public first.
Now, this is where I have to step in and remind us all that the betting markets are indeed just that: gambling.
And while all investing involves risk, perps and even brand-spanking-new IPOs like SpaceX carry even more risk.
So, if you need your investment dollars for income, expenses or positions with better than 50/50 odds …
Then let the more-speculative types have the next big IPOs, too.
But now that we know just how close the folks on Hyperliquid and Polymarket came to predicting SpaceX’s first day of trading …
We could have a pretty good idea about how Anthropic and OpenAI’s IPOs will go. And, potentially, in what order!
I’ll leave you with this …
It’s not often that privacy-seeking crypto investors have this kind of enthusiasm for publicly traded issues.
But it’s also not surprising, as more traditional investors seek diversification, privacy and even safe harbor in cryptos.
That’s just one of the stories you might have missed this week.
Here are a few others that you will want to catch up on before a new week begins.
Wall Street Is Buying One Crypto It Swore It’d Never Touch
Cypherpunk Technologies just disclosed that it holds 314,185 Zcash (ZEC, “B-”) tokens, one of the leading privacy coins in crypto. But that’s not the story. The real insight for investors is why this change happened … and who the buyers actually are.
Galaxy Digital Hits 2 Milestones in 1 Week
Galaxy is a crypto-native financial company that works to bridge tradfi with digital assets and the blockchain ecosystem. Not only has it just joined the Fortune 500, but one of the world’s largest wealth managers, Morgan Stanley, has just partnered with it.
AI Isn’t Killing Software. It’s Forcing It to Adapt.
The recent SaaS-apocalypse trade was lazy because it treated software as a monolith. Here’s what we’re watching in the grand asset repricing that’s still underway.
Watch These Bitcoin Indicators for the Next Move
Bitcoin tested and slightly breached the February intraday low on June 5. Then it bounced with conviction. This is textbook support-finding behavior. However, don't be surprised to see Bitcoin briefly trading with a $58K handle. Here’s why.
This Crypto Hit a New High as the Market Corrected
Hyperliquid is a perpetuals exchange, where traders can bet on crypto prices with leverage. If your bet that the price rises or falls is right, then you earn. And those who bet on Hyperliquid itself in Mark Gough’s Next Crypto Superstars just had the opportunity to bank an 80% gain!
To your health and wealth,
Dawn Pennington
Editorial Director
1https://info.arkm.com/research/spcx-on-hyperliquid-what-happens-at-ipo
2https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/spacex-ipo-spcx-live-updates.html
3https://polymarket.com/event/will-anthropic-or-openai-ipo-first
