A historic stock market debut is imminent, and the crypto market is bracing for impact. SpaceX has filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, aiming to raise $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion. If successful, this IPO will be the largest in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29 billion record in 2019.
The likelihood of a June listing is 65%, with a 53% chance that the first-day closing market cap will exceed $2 trillion, according to Polymarket traders. 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 year-end. This massive capital pull could lead to a rotation out of equities and into these new listings, affecting the crypto market.
The historical parallel with Coinbase's IPO in 2021, which marked the peak of the last bitcoin cycle, is a point of concern. When speculative capital leaves equities for an IPO allocation, some of that capital would otherwise be invested in higher-beta assets, including crypto.
The 30% retail allocation in SpaceX's IPO, roughly $22 billion, is three times the typical retail share, and this money will not be invested in crypto. Furthermore, SpaceX holds 8,285 BTC, worth roughly $600 million, making its IPO the first public-market debut of a company with a material bitcoin position disclosed under the 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.
A bitcoin rally that extends through the roadshow suggests the spot-ETF bid has decoupled crypto from broader risk-on flows. The question remains whether the crypto market will learn from the lesson of Coinbase's IPO or repeat the same pattern.