A historic stock market debut is imminent, with SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) expected to take place in June, drawing interest from the same liquidity pool as crypto. SpaceX has filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, aiming to raise $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion.
This would make it the largest stock market debut in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29 billion record in 2019. OpenAI and Anthropic are also planning to go public, with valuations nearing $1 trillion and potentially raising over $60 billion, respectively. The combined capital raise of over $240 billion from these IPOs could exceed every venture-backed US IPO since 2000, according to PitchBook estimates.
The massive influx of capital into these tech and AI companies may lead to a rotation out of equities and a compression of liquidity in other assets, including crypto. Bitcoin, ether, and other major cryptocurrencies have traded with increasing correlation to the Nasdaq and S&P 500 over the past two cycles. As speculative capital leaves equities for IPO allocations, some of the same capital that would otherwise drive up crypto prices may be redirected.
Historical parallels, such as Coinbase's IPO in April 2021, which marked the peak of the last bitcoin cycle, suggest that institutional milestones can mark tops rather than starting lines. The 30% retail allocation in SpaceX's IPO, roughly $22 billion, may also divert capital away from crypto.
Furthermore, SpaceX's disclosed bitcoin position of 8,285 BTC, worth around $600 million, makes its IPO the first public-market debut of a company with a material bitcoin holding under new fair-value accounting rules. The testable signal going forward will be whether crypto holds up through the roadshow window in May and June or begins to decline as allocators free up room for the SpaceX subscription. A bitcoin rally extending through the roadshow could indicate that crypto has decoupled from broader risk-on flows.