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. The company has filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, aiming to raise $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion. 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 estimated valuations of $1 trillion and $60 billion, respectively.
The combined capital raised by these companies could exceed $240 billion, a figure that surpasses every venture-backed US IPO since 2000. This massive influx of capital could lead to a rotation out of equities and into these new listings, potentially impacting the crypto market. Crypto assets, including bitcoin, have traded in tandem with tech and AI equities, and the same risk-on liquidity pool that funds these assets could be affected by the IPOs. 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 an asset's cycle, rather than the beginning, as the capital that chases these milestones is the same capital that was previously holding up the asset. SpaceX's IPO has two features that connect directly to crypto flows: a 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.