A historic stock market debut is imminent, and it may siphon off liquidity from the crypto space. SpaceX has filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, aiming to raise $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion.
This would surpass the record set by Saudi Aramco's $29 billion IPO in 2019. The listing is expected to take place in June, with Polymarket traders assigning a 65% probability to this timeline. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic are also planning to go public, targeting valuations near $1 trillion and aiming to raise over $60 billion, respectively.
The combined capital raise of these three companies could exceed $240 billion from June to the end of the year, a figure that surpasses the total venture-backed US IPOs since 2000. This massive influx of capital could lead to a rotation out of equities and into these new listings, potentially triggering a bearish trend in the market. The implications for crypto are significant, as it operates within the same risk-on liquidity pool as tech and AI equities. Bitcoin, ether, and other major cryptocurrencies have traded in tandem with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 over the past two cycles.
As speculative capital leaves equities for IPO allocations, some of this capital may also leave the crypto market, potentially leading to a downturn. Historical parallels, such as the Coinbase listing in April 2021, suggest that institutional milestones can mark the peak of a cycle rather than its beginning. The SpaceX IPO has two key features that connect directly to crypto flows: a 30% retail allocation and the company's significant bitcoin holdings.
The retail allocation could divert funds away from crypto, while the bitcoin holdings make SpaceX the first public company with a material bitcoin position disclosed under new fair-value accounting rules. The testable signal going forward is whether crypto can hold up through the roadshow window in May and June or begins to drift lower as allocators prepare for the SpaceX subscription. A bitcoin rally that extends through the roadshow could indicate that crypto has decoupled from broader risk-on flows.