A historic stock market debut is approaching, with SpaceX's $75 billion IPO expected to draw significant interest and potentially impacting the crypto market. The company 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 affect the crypto market, as it sits in the same liquidity pool as tech and AI equities. The correlation between crypto and traditional markets has tightened over the past two cycles, with bitcoin and other majors trading in tandem with the Nasdaq and S&P 500. When speculative capital leaves equities for an IPO allocation, some of that capital may also leave the crypto market, potentially causing a downturn.
The historical parallel with Coinbase's IPO in 2021, which marked the peak of the last bitcoin cycle, is a cause for concern. Institutional milestones often mark the top of a cycle rather than the beginning, as the capital that chases these milestones is the same capital that was previously holding up the asset. Two features of the SpaceX listing connect directly to crypto flows: the 30% retail allocation, which could divert funds away from crypto, and the company's material bitcoin position, disclosed under new fair-value accounting rules.
The testable signal going forward is whether crypto holds up through the roadshow window in May and June or begins to drift lower as allocators free up room for the SpaceX subscription.