Pre-IPO New Battleground: On the Eve of Listing, $SPCX Has Been Pushed to a $2.5 Trillion Valuation

Original Author: Curly, Deep Tide TechFlow

Before the hype around $CBRS has fully subsided, Trade.xyz launched its second Pre-IPO perpetual contract on Hyperliquid this morning.

This time, the underlying asset is SpaceX.

According to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters, SpaceX confidentially submitted an S-1 registration document to the SEC on April 1st, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and planning to raise up to $75 billion. If successful, this would be 2.5 times larger than Saudi Aramco's $29 billion IPO in 2019, making it the largest single public offering in the history of human capital markets.

The whole world is waiting for this stock. Now, on-chain, there's no need to wait.

According to a Trade.xyz announcement, $SPCX is priced based on 11.87 billion fully diluted shares, with a starting price of $150.

Based on SpaceX's listing application filed with the SEC, the target valuation is $1.75 trillion, which translates to approximately $147 per share. This means Trade.xyz has set the starting line for $SPCX near the valuation SpaceX provided itself.

But on-chain sentiment clearly believes this price is too low.

Within hours of its launch, SPCX's price jumped from $150 to a high of $216, a rise of 44%. Calculated on the same number of shares, a price of $216 corresponds to a valuation of approximately $2.56 trillion, nearly 50% higher than SpaceX's own target.

Given the current situation, is $SPCX expensive or cheap pre-market?

Stair-Step Price Control: SPCX On-Chain Volatility is Muted

We last saw a Pre-IPO contract establish its price from the $CBRS launch three weeks ago.

According to Hyperliquid News data, CBRS traded stably around $277 on-chain before its IPO, approximately 50% higher than Cerebras' final offering price of $185.

Many thought the on-chain price was too high back then, but Cerebras opened directly at $350, another 26% higher than the on-chain price.

On-chain traders were right in their direction, providing a more aggressive price than the underwriters, but even so, they underestimated the frenzy of the actual opening.

The situation with SPCX now looks familiar. The on-chain price is nearly 50% higher than the target valuation in SpaceX's listing application, almost identical to the premium ratio of CBRS on-chain at the time.

However, the author believes one should be cautious about directly applying the CBRS experience. Cerebras raised $5.5 billion, while SpaceX plans to raise $750 billion. One is a mid-sized tech IPO, the other is the largest public offering in history. The larger the size, the heavier the institutional pricing power, and it's unknown how far on-chain retail sentiment can lead institutions.

There is also a variable that didn't exist with CBRS. According to Trade.xyz documentation, the SPCX pre-market this time includes a stair-step price control mechanism:

The deviation between the oracle price and the market price cannot exceed 20%. Once triggered, trading locks until the oracle catches up to allow the next round. There is a maximum of 7 steps for both upward and downward movements. After completing 7 steps up, the price is capped; after 7 steps down, the price is floored. This continues until the official IPO or the contract expires on August 29th.

This design means SPCX's price is confined within a calculable range. Unlike CBRS, which was fully free pricing, there is a ceiling above and a floor below.

For traders, the nature of the game has changed. Both the upside potential and downside risk are limited.

Is there an off-chain benchmark to check if the on-chain pricing is unreasonable? According to Bloomberg, Brookfield disclosed on May 14th that it holds $2 billion in SpaceX Pre-IPO shares, corresponding to a valuation exceeding $2 trillion.

This means the price offered by institutional investors in the private market is already significantly higher than the $1.75 trillion in the listing application. The current on-chain valuation of around $2.5 trillion is approximately 25% higher than the private market.

No one can give a definitive answer yet on whether this premium is reasonable. However, there are at least two reference points: the private market has already valued SpaceX above $2 trillion; and the CBRS experience suggests that a 50% on-chain premium ultimately proved insufficient.

Everything might only become clear when $SPCX actually opens around June 12th.

CEXs Join the Fray, Competing for Pre-market Stocks

When CBRS launched three weeks ago, Pre-IPO perpetual contracts were essentially Hyperliquid's exclusive business.

SpaceX is different; major platforms are all jumping in. According to BitMart statistics, OKX's SpaceX perpetual contract is quoted around $2000, Gate around $1908, Bitget's preSPAX around $680, and Binance Wallet around $720. Hyperliquid's SPCX is trading at $216...

The same SpaceX, yet prices range from $216 to $2000, a difference of nearly 10 times?

This isn't because someone set the price wrong. The share base used by each platform is completely different. Hyperliquid's SPCX is priced based on 11.87 billion post-split shares, while many CEXs use the pre-split share count, naturally resulting in a higher unit price.

According to Bitget's announcement, preSPAX claims to be backed by real equity issued by Republic, whereas most other platforms offer purely synthetic derivatives. Even the underlying asset class differs.

For those unfamiliar with the mechanics, there is an easy pitfall here. Seeing $216 on Hyperliquid and $2000 on OKX, one might instinctively think Hyperliquid is ten times cheaper. In reality, the implied valuation could be similar; the difference lies only in the share base and product structure.

Placing an order without calculating the valuation is a surefire way to lose money quickly.

Price fragmentation itself also tells a story. During CBRS, only Hyperliquid offered a Pre-IPO contract. Within less than a month, SpaceX Pre-IPO products have flooded major exchanges. This category is rapidly evolving from an experiment on a single platform to infrastructure for the entire industry.

For Hyperliquid, the good news is that they personally validated this category. The bad news is that anyone can offer it.

Everyone is rushing to capture this category, and the reason behind it might be more noteworthy than the category itself.

Over the past year or so, the crypto market's own narrative has been weakening. The heat from meme coins fades faster with each cycle, altcoins lack new stories, on-chain trading volumes are shrinking, and active user counts on many platforms have started to decline. Everyone is searching for the next thing that can generate real trading volume.

High-profile US stock IPOs happen to fill this gap. Companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic carry global-level attention. They don't need any platform to create hype; the attention is naturally there.

More importantly, unlike meme coins, these assets have real revenue, a referable valuation system, and a clear listing timeline. Traders aren't betting on a vague narrative. While emotions play a part, the underlying assets are real and verifiable.

This kind of certainty is a scarce commodity in the current crypto market.

So, platforms are competing to list SpaceX's Pre-IPO. They aren't just grabbing a product; they are competing for the gateway to the next phase of trading activity. When native crypto narratives stall, integrating the world's hottest traditional assets, allowing them to be priced, traded, and speculated upon on-chain, may be a new path the entire industry is charting.

US stock Pre-IPO is becoming the new battleground for the crypto industry. Embracing change is the more pragmatic choice.