A historic stock market debut is on the horizon, with SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) expected in June, which could impact the crypto market as it competes for investment capital. SpaceX has filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, aiming for a $75 billion capital raise at a valuation of $1.75 trillion. This would surpass the record set by Saudi Aramco's $29 billion IPO in 2019.
Meanwhile, 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 the total venture-backed US IPOs since 2000, according to PitchBook estimates.
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 founder of crypto AI project Post Fiat, Alex Good, warns that the SpaceX IPO could mark the beginning of a bearish equities market, drawing parallels to the Solana $300 moment.
MSCI has modeled a scenario where megacap IPOs in 2026 could lead to index-driven flows, sector-rotation effects, and a compression of liquidity in non-megacap assets. As crypto assets, including bitcoin and ether, are closely tied to the same risk-on liquidity pool as tech and AI equities, they may be affected by the capital shift.
Historical data shows that bitcoin and other majors have traded with increasing correlation to the Nasdaq and S&P 500 over the past two cycles. When speculative capital leaves equities for IPO allocations, it may also reduce the demand for higher-beta assets like crypto. The Coinbase listing in April 2021 serves as a cautionary tale, where the IPO was followed by a 50% drawdown in bitcoin within six weeks. The lesson is that institutional milestones often mark the peak rather than the starting point of a trend, as the capital that chases these milestones is the same capital that previously supported the asset.
SpaceX's IPO has two key features that connect directly to crypto flows: a 30% retail allocation, which is three times the typical retail share, and the company's disclosed material bitcoin position of 8,285 BTC, worth roughly $600 million. The testable signal going forward is whether crypto can hold up through the roadshow window in May and June or begins to decline as allocators make room for the SpaceX subscription. A bitcoin rally that extends through the roadshow period could suggest that the spot-ETF bid has decoupled crypto from broader risk-on flows. However, the impact of SpaceX's IPO on the crypto market remains to be seen, and whether crypto treats this lesson as learned or learns it again will be visible in the market trends starting roughly six weeks from now.