The pre-IPO (initial public offering) market mania is overheating with Hyperliquid, Binance, and Polymarket all betting on it.
On Thursday, Binance unveiled what it called the ‘first pre-IPO perpetual’ for SpaceX (SPCX) on its Futures market. It did a whopping $85 million at debut, lifting SPCX from $197 to $224, a 13% jump.
However, the launch was volatile, with gains quickly erased. As of press time, bulls were trying to reverse the losses.
Traders bet on SpaceX’s $2T valuation post-IPO
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expected to go public next month. Its stock will be listed on the Nasdaq exchange by the 12th of June, 2026. According to reports, the firm expects its valuation to hit between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion after the debut.
On prediction market site Polymarket, bettors were placing a 70% chance that the firm’s valuation will hit $2T post-IPO. This is just one way retail can gain exposure to the pre-IPO mania.
Given SpaceX’s successful rocket launches and plans for orbital data centers to power AI, traders and investors are eager to own a piece of it. In the past, only wealthy investors had the privilege of owning such high-value pre-IPO stock before they went public.
But pre-IPO markets like Hiive have tried to democratize access, allowing even retail to participate. Now, crypto platforms have taken the pre-IPO markets to another level, allowing traders to gain price exposure with leverage. That’s where Binance’s SPCX perps come in.
Reacting to the update, Richard Teng, co-CEO of Binance, hailed it as a way to democratize IPO access to retail.
For decades, access to pre-IPO pricing has been gated behind institutional and private allocations. Binance is changing that, giving users a way to trade IPO expectations as they happen.
Even Hyperliquid is rolling out pre-IPO markets. In fact, Hyperliquid was recently used as price discovery for AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems (Nasdaq: CBRS) on the listing day. This further underscores how crucial these pre-IPO perps are becoming.
However, these secondary markets have attracted scrutiny from traditional exchanges and the unlisted firms they track. In fact, other firms planning IPOs, like Anthropic and OpenAI, have warned that stocks sold via secondary markets are “legally void.”
Final Summary
- Binance launched a SpaceX perpetual offering amid surging market interest in pre-IPO markets.
- Still, the secondary markets, including crypto platforms, face heightened scrutiny from unlisted firms and traditional exchanges.
