Some online chatter seems to speculate that retail investors may be selling crypto in pursuit of the biggest IPO ever.
Elon Musk-owned rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company SpaceX is selling up to 30% of its record $75 billion offering directly to retail investors through Robinhood, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, more than three times the portion a typical IPO allocates to individuals.
The roadshow opened Thursday already oversubscribed with more orders than shares offered, Bloomberg reported. It is offering shares worth $1.8 trillion.
Bitcoin fell about 16% over the same time period, briefly trading below $60,000 before reversing to around $61,000, according to CoinDesk data.
Stablecoins are the most direct way to track money leaving crypto for dollars. A trader cashing out bitcoin to fund a brokerage account converts to a dollar-pegged token like USDC or tether and then redeems it for cash. This manifests itself in two ways, as stablecoins pulled out of exchanges and later as a dwindling supply when issuers burn the redeemed tokens.
None of the moved of these readings show irregularities, per data assessed by CoinDesk Outflows for USDC and tether remained within the range they have held since February, according to CryptoQuant data. The biggest single days in recent months were $2.5 billion in USDC on May 22 and $3.6 billion in pegs on May 20, both of which came before the selloff.
Bitcoin and ether saw big gains on Friday, with 66,470 bitcoin and about 2.49 million ether moving off exchanges, among the biggest one-day totals of the year, according to CryptoQuant’s data.
An outflow is coins leaving an exchange to a private wallet, which is what a buyer does after receiving delivery. Selling does the reverse, coins move to exchanges to be sold.
However, on-chain data has a blind spot. It cannot see inside a Robinhood or Coinbase account, where someone can sell bitcoin for dollars without touching a public blockchain.
Whether or not crypto holders have funded their allocations will not be accountable until the brokerages publish their own numbers. Robinhood reports monthly trading metrics, with June crypto volumes due in mid-July, and Coinbase breaks out retail activity in second-quarter results later this month.
Bitcoin and ether saw big gains on Friday, with 66,470 bitcoin and about 2.49 million ether moving off exchanges, among the biggest one-day totals of the year, according to CryptoQuant’s data.
An outflow is coins leaving an exchange to a private wallet, which is what a buyer does after receiving delivery. Selling does the reverse, coins move to exchanges to be sold. The biggest flows of the week look like raise and dip buys, not a battle for cash.
The only place where money was clearly drained from crypto was the funds.
Spot bitcoin ETFs, the exchange-traded products that hold bitcoin directly, bled for 13 straight sessions through June 3, a record stretch worth about $4.4 billion, before a small $3 million inflow snapped the streak.
Ether ETFs were riding a longer 17-session streak that broke on the same day. When investors withdraw money from these funds, the issuer sells the underlying coins, so the redemptions are real sales.
SpaceX prices on June 11 and lists on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX the next day.
