As SpaceX approaches what could be the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, a segment of the cryptocurrency market has begun anticipating this debut. Recent trends suggest that these expectations may be noteworthy.
Traders are utilizing perpetual futures—contracts that do not expire—to speculate on the company’s future listing price months in advance of the IPO. These contracts, tracking SpaceX, began trading this month, averaging nearly $18 million in daily trading volume over a fortnight.
Unlike stocks, these contracts do not confer any legal claim on the underlying company and incur ongoing holding costs. However, last month saw similar contracts accurately predict the IPO of Cerebras Systems. Trade.xyz initiated its contract at $175, while the IPO’s expected price range was between $115 and $125. Ultimately, Cerebras was priced at $185. An hour before Nasdaq opened, the contract was valued at $340, while Cerebras shares opened at $350, according to a report by Castle Labs.
Though one example does not establish a track record, proponents cite Cerebras as evidence that such markets can capture genuine demand signals ahead of public listings, as opposed to merely generating speculative noise.
What began as a method for retail traders seeking exposure to popular AI startups is now attracting significant attention. Major exchanges, including Binance, Bitget, and OKX, have launched comparable products this year.
“Pre-IPO has historically been a club for accredited investors and private funds,” said Lloyd Lee, CEO of the crypto hedge fund Hyperithm. “Crypto rails are opening that door to anyone with a wallet.”
Measured by trading volume, the market for these synthetic assets remains relatively small, with SpaceX trading in the millions. The company aims to raise up to $75 billion at a valuation of $1.8 trillion, as reported by Bloomberg.
Trade.xyz’s perpetual contract for SpaceX was launched on May 18 and is currently trading around $200. The company filed for its IPO publicly on May 20, planning to allocate super-voting shares to Elon Musk to help him maintain control.
Amid rising interest in tokenized assets linked to pre-IPO stocks, particularly for AI startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, the debut of Cerebras intensified interest in SpaceX contracts.
Part of the attraction of these products is their potential to democratize access to investments. Retail investors typically have limited access to significant IPOs, with only a small number of shares available for public sale.
Tokenized products are increasingly available in regions where access to stock markets is restricted. “Globally, less than 10% of the population has direct access to U.S. equities, and access to pre-IPO offerings is even narrower,” noted Hyperithm’s Lee. “For traders in jurisdictions with limited financial infrastructure, accessing these assets through perpetual futures represents notable progress.”
However, as perpetual contracts differ from stocks, they carry unique risks. For instance, a recent mishap on the Ventuals platform mistakenly liquidated users’ positions due to incorrect SpaceX pricing data.
According to Luca Parlamento, portfolio manager at D2 Finance, trading perpetual contracts can be viewed as a basis trade, capitalizing on the price differences between related assets. “Pre-IPO perpetuals collapse part of that window into a public order book before the bell rings,” Parlamento explained. “They are not meant to replace accredited secondary channels, but provide a retail-accessible option for trading the IPO opening basis in real time.”
Despite the challenges—such as the absence of a tradable stock for arbitrage, potential distortions in funding rates, and dependence on oracle mechanisms for stock-pricing data—Bitget CEO Gracy Chen stated that SpaceX perpetual traders appear to be positioning for the long term. “There is a real cohort of users who are holding the exposure rather than immediately flipping it,” she noted.
Trade.xyz’s SpaceX perpetual contracts, priced in the dollar stablecoin USDC, currently hold over $50 million in open interest. While these contracts may not make retail traders early investors in SpaceX, they provide an unprecedented live price to trade ahead of the company’s public debut.
