Hyperliquid Pre-Launch Contract Controversy: Why Is the SpaceX Share Count Suddenly Invalid?

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@Azuma_eth)

Yesterday, Odaily Planet Daily published an article analyzing the reasons behind the huge price differences in SpaceX pre-market contracts on platforms such as Binance, OKX, and Hyperliquid — it is recommended to first read Why Is the Price Gap So Large for SpaceX Pre-Market Contracts Across Exchanges?.

The article mentioned that when Hyperliquid launched the SpaceX pre-market contract SPCX via the ecosystem's HIP-3 market TradeXYZ, it disclosed in its documentation the use of an equity base of approximately 11.87 billion shares. However, that statement was subsequently deleted, sparking community speculation about whether the market would later undergo a Rebase.

• Editor's note: A Rebase refers to correcting equity data and corresponding positions based on real-world conditions. For instance, on the evening of June 8, Binance announced that it would rebase its pre-market contract SPCX, adjusting the share count from the estimated 11.87 billion shares to the 13.08 billion shares disclosed in the latest IPO plan.

TradeXYZ Confirms: No Rebase!

Today, TradeXYZ officially responded to this matter.

TradeXYZ stated that its pre-market contracts, including SPCX, are price-based perpetual contracts that track the market's implied expected price per Class A common share (or common share). Neither the total share count nor the company's market cap are input parameters in the market rules, oracle pricing methodology, or final conversion mechanism.

As for the "11.87 billion shares" figure that previously appeared in the documentation, TradeXYZ explained that the previous documentation contained some educational examples illustrating how a user can derive a "reasonable stock price" if they have expectations about the company's market cap and total shares. These examples were intended solely to help users understand the context. However, the team received feedback that this content could be misleading, and it has therefore been removed from the documentation.

To be clear, TradeXYZ confirms that it will not use, publish, or rely on any calculation benchmarks based on total shares or market cap in SPCX or any other XYZ markets in the future. Once SpaceX completes its IPO and sufficient external price data becomes available in the market, SPCX is expected to transition to a standard external oracle pricing mechanism. At that point, the contract price is expected to gradually converge with SpaceX's public market trading price post-IPO.

In plain English, TradeXYZ has confirmed that it will not correct equity data via a Rebase. As for the previously mentioned "11.87 billion shares," that was just an example — don't take it seriously… Going forward, TradeXYZ's pre-market contracts will not reference equity data either; whatever the actual share count of the company in the real world is, that is what TradeXYZ will implicitly follow…

Community Controversy: The Numbers Were Agreed Upon, So Why the Change?

Unsurprisingly, TradeXYZ's statement has sparked significant controversy within the community. The core reason is that for participants in SPCX (especially those who only opened positions on Hyperliquid), the general expectation was that SPCX's pricing logic was directly tied to SpaceX's share count.

The "11.87 billion shares" figure was explicitly written in the official documentation. TradeXYZ had also previously explained that if an investor expected SpaceX to be valued at a certain level and assumed a total share count of approximately 11.87 billion shares, they could derive a corresponding reasonable price range. Consequently, many users had already considered this part of the product's rules.

Now, the official team has deleted the data and claimed that this content was merely "educational examples." This naturally makes some users feel "betrayed."

While TradeXYZ's statement today attempts to emphasize a different product logic — that unlike platforms like Binance and OKX, which map stock prices through market cap and share count, TradeXYZ prefers to view SPCX as an independent trading market where the price directly reflects market participants' expectations of SpaceX's future stock price, rather than a theoretical result calculated through equity data.

For the vast majority of users, however, it is not easy to understand the nuances of product rules and design differences across different markets. At the same time, Binance, OKX, and other platforms have been publicly discussing share count, valuation mapping, and Rebase mechanisms. The market naturally applies the same logic to evaluate TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid…

The gap between user perception and product design has eventually evolved into a debate about product transparency and expectation management.

Will the Pre-Market Contract Landscape Change?

Regardless of how this controversy ultimately ends, SpaceX's pre-market contract has already become the largest and most watched "IPO rehearsal" in the history of the crypto market.

What deserves more attention is that as more unlisted star companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are brought onto on-chain trading markets, the pre-market contract sector itself is entering a new phase of competition.

In the past, competition among exchanges primarily focused on who could list hot assets first. However, following the SPCX incident, the market may begin to pay more attention to another factor — whose rules are clearer, whose pricing logic is more transparent, and who can provide users with a more stable and predictable product framework.