The biggest IPO wave in history is coming. Will liquidity be drained from crypto by SpaceX and OpenAI?

The US IPO market is reopening.

This time, the market isn't waiting for a wave of ordinary tech company listings. Instead, it's bracing for a group of mega-companies capable of reshaping the scale of the global primary market: SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, along with a cohort of crypto-native and fintech companies.

For traditional markets, this is the IPO window reopening; for the crypto world, it might represent a different form of liquidity competition.

Because today's crypto market is no longer the fully self-contained market it was in 2020. Stablecoins, ETFs, publicly listed mining companies, Coinbase, Circle, Kraken, Robinhood, and MicroStrategy have connected the on-chain market with the US stock market. Global risk capital is all fishing for yield in the same dollar pool: buying BTC ETFs, buying AI stocks, buying high-FDV new tokens, or investing in "mega-narrative assets" like SpaceX and OpenAI.

Therefore, a core question surrounding this year's US IPO boom is: When more mainstream, compliant, and institutionally-allocatable high-volatility assets go public en masse, could the long-term risk appetite that the crypto market most relies on be compressed?

The US IPO Window Reopens

In Q1 2026, the US IPO market wasn't particularly hot. Renaissance Capital's Q1 review noted 35 IPOs raised about $9.9 billion, with the market recovery delayed by volatility.

However, the atmosphere warmed significantly entering Q2. By mid-May, the pace of IPO filings and offerings accelerated. Kiplinger, citing Renaissance Capital data, reported 93 IPO filings and 57 completed offerings by May 13 this year, raising a total of approximately $20.7 billion, an 86% increase year-over-year.

But that's not the main point.

What's truly causing the market to reprice the IPO boom is SpaceX's public IPO filing, followed by AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. Reuters reported that SpaceX aims to raise approximately $75 billion, with a valuation close to $2 trillion. If realized, it wouldn't just surpass historical IPOs like Saudi Aramco, Alibaba, or SoftBank; it could become the single largest IPO in the history of global capital markets.

To describe the characteristics of this year's US IPO boom in a phrase, one might call it "when the whales dance."

When the Whales Dance

SpaceX's Starship

At the core is SpaceX.

According to Reuters and multiple media reports, SpaceX has entered the IPO sprint phase, targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion, with a potential fundraising scale of $50 billion to $75 billion. These numbers are staggering in any market: Saudi Aramco's 2019 IPO raised about $29.4 billion, Alibaba's 2014 US IPO raised about $25 billion, and SpaceX's target could be two to three times that.

SpaceX's uniqueness lies in not being a single-business company. The market isn't buying "rocket launches" per se, but a hybrid of Starlink, satellite internet, deep-space transport, AI data centers, defense contracts, and Elon Musk's personal credibility. It functions more like a super-narrative collection than a company easily explained by traditional financial models.

The second is OpenAI.

According to WSJ and Reuters, OpenAI is preparing for a confidential IPO filing, with market expectations suggesting its listing valuation could reach the trillion-dollar level. OpenAI's significance isn't just ChatGPT; it's the pricing anchor for the entire AI application layer, model layer, and enterprise software gateway. Once OpenAI goes public, the US stock market will, for the first time, possess a truly "pure AI model platform" core asset.

The third is Anthropic.

Anthropic has frequently appeared in fundraising and IPO rumors this year. Market reports indicate Anthropic is discussing massive financing rounds, potentially entering a valuation range of hundreds of billions or higher, and is seen as one of the AI companies that could go public later this year. Compared to OpenAI, Anthropic is more focused on the enterprise, compliance, safety, and large-account market. If it lists, investors would likely view it as a direct comparable asset to OpenAI.

The fourth category comprises mature unicorns like Databricks, Klarna, and Chime.

These companies may not rival the scale of SpaceX or OpenAI, but they represent another direction: after the valuation compression of 2022-2024, quality private tech companies are re-testing the public markets. Databricks represents AI data infrastructure, while Klarna and Chime are bellwethers for fintech's return to the IPO market.

The fifth category involves crypto companies.

Circle completed its listing in 2025, proving the market is willing to price stablecoin businesses. Kraken has also been repeatedly linked with IPO progress this year, though the timeline has fluctuated with market conditions. However, crypto companies going public is no longer a fringe event. For the crypto world, this signifies a shift: narratives originally unfolding on-chain are being re-securitized in the US stock market.

The Impact of the IPO Wave on the Crypto World

On the surface, US IPOs and crypto liquidity seem unrelated.

SpaceX's listing won't directly require investors to redeem USDT; an OpenAI subscription won't automatically cause on-chain TVL to decline. But within a dollar-dominated global risk asset market, they are competing for the same thing: risk budget.

This is especially true for the most fragile part of the crypto world, which isn't BTC or ETH, but the long-tail assets.

The current crypto market isn't entirely cash-strapped. DeFiLlama data shows the total stablecoin market cap has been above $320 billion, near historical highs. The problem is that this money increasingly looks less like "long-term buying power" and more like "standby capital."

CoinDesk Research's April 2026 Exchange Review showed that spot trading volume on centralized exchanges fell to approximately $1.05 trillion in April, down 14% month-over-month, the lowest since November 2023. Combined spot and derivatives volume was about $4.61 trillion, declining for the fourth consecutive month. Meanwhile, derivatives' share of total trading volume rose to around 77%, with open interest remaining high.

This indicates that the crypto world hasn't lost its risk appetite; rather, that appetite is becoming "shortsighted."

Capital is willing to engage in BTC, ETH, ETF arbitrage, perpetual contracts, and short-term volatility but is reluctant to hold high-FDV new tokens long-term, lock up funds, or pre-pay for use cases three years down the line. In other words, money is still in the arena, but its duration has shortened.

This is precisely the pressure the mega US IPOs could create.

If the market simultaneously sees assets like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic go public this year, capital will naturally draw comparisons: if we are buying future narratives and accepting high valuations and volatility, why not choose the more mainstream, compliant, and institutionally allocatable AI and space assets?

For the crypto world, the impact may not manifest as an immediate drop in stablecoin market cap but could appear as three more subtle shifts:

First, altcoin rallies become shorter and less sustainable.

Second, the ability to absorb new tokens post-listing declines, especially for projects with high FDV and low circulating supply.

Third, market attention shifts from on-chain narratives to mega US IPOs, leaving only BTC, ETH, stablecoins, and a few US stock-correlated proxy assets with liquidity in the crypto space.

This isn't a traditional "liquidity crisis," but a crisis more familiar to the crypto world: there is money, but no one wants to buy your bags.

New Nasdaq Rules Make IPOs More Like a Black Hole

Another easily overlooked structural change this year involves Nasdaq-100's "fast-track inclusion" mechanism.

New Nasdaq rules effective May 1, 2026, state that qualifying large new listings, if their market cap ranks among the top 40 Nasdaq-100 components and meets other conditions, can be added to the index as soon as 15 trading days after listing.

This means mega IPOs like SpaceX won't just attract active capital on their listing day; they could quickly trigger passive fund inflows. ETFs and index funds tracking the Nasdaq-100 would need to adjust their holdings within a very short timeframe.

This has two layers of impact on the market.

On one hand, it boosts the attractiveness of mega IPOs. Investors know that if a company is large enough, it could enter the index soon after listing, followed by passive buying pressure.

On the other hand, it could amplify short-term capital crowding. Active funds, hedge funds, retail investors, and passive ETFs would all trade the same stock around the same time window. For a company of SpaceX's or OpenAI's caliber, this mechanism transforms an IPO from a primary market event into a rebalancing event for the entire tech stock market.

This is why the IPO wave this year matters more for the crypto world: it's not just several companies going public; the US stock market is preparing new liquidity pipelines for these companies.

Is the IPO Frenzy a Top Signal?

Looking at US stock market history, a single large IPO directly triggering a systemic liquidity crisis is not typical.

Instead, another pattern emerges: IPO frenzies often appear near the peak of risk appetite.

Before 1929, the US market saw an investment trust boom, with a flood of new financial products and stock issuances absorbing retail capital, inflating the bubble alongside leverage and margin trading. The IPO craze wasn't the single cause of the Great Depression, but it was part of the era's uncontrolled risk appetite.

A crowd gathered on Wall Street after the 1929 stock market crash

The 1999-2000 internet bubble was similar. Numerous internet companies without profits or even mature business models went public, with first-day pops becoming the norm. WilmerHale's IPO report indicates 537 IPOs in the US in 1999, raising about $95.3 billion; in Q1 2000, internet-related companies accounted for 60% of IPO volume. Then the Nasdaq crashed, and the IPO window quickly slammed shut.

2021 is a more recent example. Renaissance Capital data shows 397 US IPOs in 2021 raised a combined $142.4 billion, one of the largest fundraising years on record; including SPACs, the frenzy was even more pronounced. Companies like Rivian, Robinhood, Coinbase, and numerous software and consumer internet firms listed en masse. But by 2022, rising interest rates, growth stock de-rating, and the SPAC bust rapidly cooled the new issue market.

This history suggests: IPO frenzies act like a thermometer.

When the market is willing to assign ever-higher valuations to increasingly distant stories, and when primary market assets begin to flood into the secondary market, it often signals that liquidity has entered its most risk-seeking phase. Subsequently, once interest rates, earnings expectations, or risk appetite reverse, the IPO wave transitions from a "money magnet" to a "top signal."

When a Bigger Casino Opens Its Doors

The biggest change in the crypto world over the past two years has been institutionalization.

BTC ETFs turned Bitcoin into an asset in US stock accounts; Circle's listing turned stablecoins into stock market assets; Coinbase, Robinhood, miners, and MicroStrategy packaged crypto beta as US stock beta. Now, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are set to pull the "future tech narrative" back into the US stock market.

This means the competitive landscape for the crypto world has changed.

Previously, altcoins only needed to compete for liquidity with other on-chain assets. Today, they must vie for the same dollar risk budget alongside BTC ETFs, AI stocks, space stocks, stablecoin stocks, exchange stocks, and Nasdaq-100 passive capital.

In a high-liquidity environment, this isn't a problem. US stocks rise, BTC rises, and altcoins can rise too. But if liquidity marginally contracts, capital will first favor the deepest, most compliant, and easiest-to-exit assets.

This is why this year's US IPO boom is significant for the crypto world.

It won't simply create a "liquidity crisis," but it could further alter the internal capital structure of the crypto space: BTC and ETH behave more like macro assets; stablecoins act more like cash management tools; exchanges and stablecoin companies become US stock assets; and long-tail altcoins become increasingly reliant on short-term sentiment and niche narratives.

In the coming months, assessing the IPO wave's impact on the crypto world shouldn't focus solely on whether the total stablecoin market cap declines. Instead, watch more sensitive indicators:

Can spot trading volume recover? Will the derivatives share remain high? Does BTC dominance continue to suppress altcoins? Is the first-week absorption of new tokens weakening further? Is there real buying pressure when high-FDV projects unlock?

If these indicators continue to deteriorate, the impact of mega US IPOs on the crypto world won't be a one-time drain, but a further shortening of the market's capital duration.

For the crypto world, the real question isn't "Will these IPOs suck up all the stablecoins?" but rather: When the US stock market offers more mainstream high-volatility narratives, can on-chain long-tail assets still retain the capital willing to pay for distant stories?

If the answer is no, then this year's IPO boom may not become a liquidity crisis for the US stock market, but it could become a duration crisis for the crypto world's altcoin market.