Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO, which values the company at around $1.8 trillion, is priced at $135 per share, and investors won’t know how it will trade until the shares go live on the traditional market.
However, on the crypto platform Hyperliquid, the “synthetic” shares of SpaceX are already trading and might be the closest thing to an indication of how the shares might trade when they go live this week.
And the synthetic pre-IPO product has already lost its premium, despite the report that the largest-ever IPO was four times oversubscribed.
A widely-tracked 5x-leverage “perpetual” futures contract on Hyperliquid has declined for three consecutive weeks. The product, tickered SPCX, traded near $157 on Wednesday, down about 27% from its mid-May launch price of around $216, after briefly trading as high as $230.
That does not mean traders are betting against SpaceX, as SPCX still trades above the $135 IPO price. But the implied first-day premium has been cut hard. In May, the contract priced SpaceX roughly 60% above the offer, and it stood closer to 16% as of Wednesday.
The company set the offer price at $135 per share, with no price range for investors to push it higher or lower during the bookbuild. In most IPOs, bankers collect orders and move the price based on demand. But SpaceX has taken a fixed-price route where investors either take the price or do not.
That leaves the SPCX perp as one of the few places where a SpaceX-linked price is actually moving before the stock opens.
The contract does not give holders shares, allocation rights or any claim on SpaceX. It is a cash-settled derivative that allows traders to bet on where the company’s equity will trade. Unlike an IPO indication of interest, traders in the perp have money at risk and can lose it before the first share changes hands.
The official book still looks huge. Reuters reported that SpaceX has drawn more than $250 billion in investor interest for a $75 billion raise, making the deal several times oversubscribed. Large investors often ask for more stock than they expect to receive, especially in hot deals.
SPCX’s prices suggest traders still expect a premium to the $135 offer.
That may partly reflect broader market pressure. Crypto has weakened into the IPO, and bitcoin remains well below its January high. Some investors may also be raising cash to fund SpaceX allocations, adding pressure to the same risk market where SPCX trades.