A historic stock market debut is imminent, with SpaceX's $75 billion IPO expected to draw significant interest and potentially divert liquidity away from the crypto market. The company has filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation.
If successful, this would be the largest stock market debut in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29 billion record in 2019. SpaceX is not alone, as OpenAI and Anthropic are also planning to go public, with the three companies potentially raising over $240 billion from June to the end of the year. This massive capital pull could have a significant impact on the crypto market, which shares the same liquidity pool as tech and AI equities. Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have traded with increasing correlation to the Nasdaq and S&P 500, and a rotation out of equities could lead to a decrease in crypto values.
The historical parallel with Coinbase's IPO in 2021, which marked the peak of the last bitcoin cycle, is a cause for concern. The 30% retail allocation in SpaceX's IPO, roughly $22 billion, could also divert funds away from crypto investments.
Furthermore, SpaceX's material bitcoin position, worth around $600 million, makes its IPO the first public-market debut of a company with a disclosed bitcoin holding under the 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 free up room for the SpaceX subscription. A bitcoin rally that extends through the roadshow suggests the spot-ETF bid has decoupled crypto from broader risk-on flows.