Binance has launched perpetual futures, allowing users to trade the expected valuations of private companies before they go public. The first contract to go live is tied to SpaceX, a company expected to debut at a valuation of $2 trillion or more.
“Pre-IPO Perpetual Contracts” are designed to give retailers early exposure to high-profile initial public offerings (IPOs), a market segment historically reserved for institutional investors and venture capital firms. The first listing, SPCXUSDT, will be margined and settled in the dollar-pegged stablecoin tether and is based on the expected market valuation of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX).
The move marks the expansion of Binance’s derivatives product suite into traditional finance.
“Pre-IPO perpetual futures is another example of how Binance is democratizing access to market opportunities by combining crypto-native infrastructure with major financial events. As interest in public listings continues to grow, we are providing users with a more flexible way to engage with anticipated IPOs earlier,” Shunyet Jan, head of spot and derivatives business at Binance, said in a press release to Coin.
“This launch reflects our vision for Binance as a financial super app – one that provides access to a growing range of financial opportunities that have traditionally been harder to reach,” Jan added.
These pre-IPO contracts are built on the same perpetual futures rails used for crypto trading. Before a company’s public debut, the contract price will reflect publicly available signals, such as private financing rounds and announced IPO price ranges. When the stock begins trading on a secondary exchange, the contract will transition to reflect the stock’s live market performance.
SpaceX filed its S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday, revealing holdings of 18,712 BTC at a price of about $35,000 per bitcoin. The filing also revealed $4.69 billion in first-quarter revenue and a net loss of $4.28 billion and hints at a possible Nasdaq debut next month.
Traders on decentralized betting platform Polymarket are pricing in a more than 70% chance that the IPO will eventually close above $2 trillion. Reuters reported that SpaceX is targeting a valuation of around $1.75 trillion for its planned IPO.
Binance’s latest listing of SpaceX pre-IPO futures follows comparable offerings from OKX, Crypto.com and Hyperliquid’s Trade.xyz. Trade.xyz’s SpaceX perpetual futures launched on May 18 with a reference price of $150 per share, implying a valuation of $1.78 trillion and generating an impressive $33 million in trading volume on the first day alone.
The growing number of SpaceX pre-IPO markets may take capital and, more importantly, attention away from major cryptocurrencies.
It may be more than a coincidence that bitcoin’s price rally ran out of steam at around $80,000 a week ago and prices have since pulled back below $78,000.
Traditional market analysts are concerned that SpaceX’s upcoming IPO, expected to be the largest stock debut in history, could divert significant capital away from other segments of the US market, including European IPOs.
Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster captured the sentiment on X, noting that SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO on Wednesday “sucked the air out of NVDA’s quarter,” even as the AI chipmaker delivered quarterly earnings. Nvidia shares still ended the day flat at $220.60.
“Yes, NVDA crushed earnings,” Munster said. “However, SpaceX’s positioning as a superior AI company offers a more compelling long-term (10-year) growth story.” He added that Nvidia and SpaceX together could reach a combined market capitalization of $7 trillion.
