One of the biggest stock market debuts in history is just six weeks away, and cryptocurrencies are also in the same liquidity pool, drawing interest.
SpaceX filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC earlier this month, aiming to raise $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion.
If the expected June listing is priced near that level, the offering would be more than 2.5 times Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record of $29 billion, making it the biggest stock market debut in history. Polymarket traders estimate there is a 65% chance that the company will go public in June, and a 53% chance that its first-day market cap will exceed $2 trillion.
SpaceX is not alone. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is aiming to go public in the fourth quarter at a valuation of nearly $1 trillion. Anthropic is reportedly planning an October debut and could raise more than $60 billion.
If the three companies go public as planned, PitchBook estimates that more than $240 billion will flow in between June and the end of the year, more than all venture-backed U.S. IPOs since 2000 combined.
“After the SpaceX IPO, I think the stock price will start to become very bearish. That’s Solana’s $300 moment,” Alex Good, founder of crypto AI project Post-Fiat, said in a recent interview on Counterparty TV.
“Right now we’re in a period of high bids and every investment bank is going to upgrade every AI stock because they’re going to get huge fees from these IPOs.”
Good’s framework captures a mechanistic setup in which the three largest listings could be clustered within a six-month window, preceded by adjusted sell-side optimism by the banks executing the trades, followed by rotation.
MSCI, which constructs many of the benchmark stock indexes tracked by institutional investor portfolios, in February modeled a scenario in which a mega-cap IPO flagged in 2026 could trigger billions of dollars of index-driven flows, sector rotation effects across global benchmarks, and liquidity compression for everything but new names.
Cryptocurrencies sit within the same risk-on liquidity pool that funds tech and AI stocks.
Bitcoin, Ethernet, and other major stocks have traded with increasing correlation to the Nasdaq and S&P 500 over the past two cycles. When speculative funds leave stocks for IPO allocation, some of the funds left behind are the same funds that bid up high-beta assets, including cryptocurrencies.
However, the historical similarities are concerning. Coinbase went public on April 14, 2021 at the peak of the last Bitcoin cycle. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $64,800 on the same day, beginning a 50% decline within six weeks.
Traders who read Coinbase’s IPO as a signal that crypto was going mainstream watched mainstream capital change hands over the next six months. The lesson here is that institutional milestones often mark the pinnacle rather than the starting line. This is because the capital chasing the milestone is the same capital that previously supported the asset.
Although SpaceX is not a cryptocurrency company, two features on the list are directly related to cryptocurrency flows. First, the 30% retail allocation, roughly $22 billion of the $75 billion offer, is three times the typical retail share in deals of this size.
Such retail allocation to SpaceX is money that is not being bid on meme coins, altcoins, or Bitcoin itself.
Second, SpaceX itself holds 8,285 BTC worth approximately $600 million under management on Coinbase Prime, making this IPO the first public market debut for a company with a significant Bitcoin position disclosed under new fair value accounting rules that took effect at the end of 2024.
A testable signal going forward is whether the cryptocurrency will hold up through the May and June roadshow window, or whether it will start to fall as allocators free up room for SpaceX subscriptions.
However, Bitcoin’s continued rally during the roadshow period suggests that spot ETF bidding has isolated the cryptocurrency from broader risk onflows.
Coinbase’s peak in April 2021 was when one company absorbed $86 billion in market capitalization in a single day. At $75 billion, SpaceX is not a scaled-up Coinbase. This is a different kind of event considering the market has had five years to learn from the previous event.
Whether cryptocurrencies treat that lesson as learned, or learn it again, will be revealed on tape beginning approximately six weeks from now.
