SpaceX Pre-IPO Futures Launch on Trade.xyz
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- Trade.xyz launched a SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual futures contract on May 17 atop the Hyperliquid blockchain, giving offshore traders a way to speculate on SpaceX's price ahead of its expected IPO without holding any equity stake.
- SpaceX is targeting an $80 billion raise on June 12 with a valuation near $2 trillion, per a Wall Street Journal report — what MarketWatch calls the biggest IPO in history.
- The SpaceX contract launched at a $150 reference price, spiked to $216 within hours, then settled around $202, implying a $2.4 trillion valuation based on Trade.xyz's share-count benchmark.
- Trade.xyz uses perpetual futures rather than tokenized equity stakes, sidestepping the SPV problem that cratered PreStocks' OpenAI and Anthropic tokens earlier this month after both companies said they wouldn't honor third-party transfers.
- Hyperliquid and Trade.xyz are off-limits to U.S. investors for regulatory reasons, but some U.S. traders use VPNs to access the platform; Trade.xyz held the No. 1 spot among decentralized crypto exchanges for real-world assets with $2.3 billion in open interest, per Loris Tools.
- The Cerebras pre-IPO perpetual on Trade.xyz accurately presaged Cerebras's post-IPO runup after its May 14 listing, according to 21shares' Stephen Coltman, suggesting the model can forecast pricing for next month's SpaceX debut.
Why it matters: Trade.xyz's futures-based design avoids the legal landmines that tanked PreStocks' tokenized OpenAI and Anthropic stakes, positioning perpetual futures as the surviving vehicle for offshore pre-IPO speculation. With SpaceX's $80B raise on June 12 expected to be the largest IPO in history and the contract already pulling $33M in first-day volume, retail traders outside the U.S. now have a 24/7 market for private-company price discovery that Wall Street's allocation system can't serve.
