SpaceX Pre-IPO Perpetuals Go Live on Hyperliquid as Price Discovery Moves Onchain

Price discovery for what could be the largest IPO in history is now happening onchain. Trade.xyz launched the first SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual futures contract on Hyperliquid Sunday at roughly 5:16 AM UTC, giving crypto traders a cash-settled way to bet on where Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company will open when it lists.

The contract, trading under the ticker SPCX-USDC, launched with a $150 reference price based on SpaceX’s reported 11.87 billion fully diluted shares, implying a starting valuation of roughly $1.78 trillion. That sits inside the $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion range SpaceX is reportedly targeting for its public offering. Within hours, SPCX spiked to $216, pushing the implied valuation above $2.5 trillion, before settling near $203. First-hour volume reached roughly $11.48 million, with open interest around $12.34 million.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

SPCX is the second pre-IPO perpetual market on Trade.xyz after Cerebras Systems (CBRS), which launched May 1. The Cerebras contract proved remarkably accurate: the pre-IPO synthetic closely tracked the eventual listing price, offering an early validation of onchain price discovery for blockbuster IPOs. SpaceX has a Bitcoin connection too. The company holds 8,285 BTC in Coinbase Prime custody, a position that will appear in public filings for the first time once the S-1 is made public.

HYPE rallied 7% on the SPCX listing, outperforming bitcoin and most major tokens in a broadly down market. The listing adds to a wave of momentum for Hyperliquid: Coinbase became its official USDC treasury deployer last Thursday, and the 21Shares THYP ETF launched earlier this week. SpaceX filed its S-1 confidentially with the SEC on April 1 and is reportedly targeting June 11 for IPO pricing on Nasdaq, with trading expected as early as June 12.