Cboe Global Markets plans to list traditional equity options on SpaceX starting Tuesday, June 16, giving traders their first chance to make leveraged bets on what is now the most valuable company to ever go public. The listing is contingent on final checks and certification from the Options Clearing Corporation.
The timing is aggressive. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share on June 11, raised $75 billion in the process, and began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12. Four days later, options traders get their turn.
From IPO to options in record time
SpaceX’s post-IPO valuation sits at approximately $1.77 trillion, putting it in the same atmospheric layer as Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
Full contract specifications for the SpaceX options haven’t been publicly released yet. But analysts widely expect heavy interest in short-dated, out-of-the-money contracts, the kind of lottery-ticket trades that tend to attract both institutional speculators and retail traders looking for asymmetric upside on a volatile new listing.
Crypto got there first
Multiple platforms launched perpetual futures and tokenized products tied to SpaceX’s anticipated valuation back in May, weeks before shares ever hit a regulated exchange. Coinbase offered a SpaceX Pre-IPO perpetual contract that settled in USDC. Kraken rolled out exposure through its xStocks product line. Trade.xyz’s perpetual contract reportedly reached a reference price of around $203, well above the eventual $135 IPO price.
The gap between the crypto-implied price and the actual IPO price also tells you something about the speculative premium baked into these products. Traders on decentralized and semi-decentralized platforms were willing to pay a roughly 50% premium over the IPO price for early access.
What this means for investors
The launch of SpaceX options creates a two-track market for leveraged exposure to the company. On one side, you have Cboe’s regulated options with standardized contracts, clearinghouse backing, and the full apparatus of traditional derivatives infrastructure. On the other, you have crypto-native perpetuals and tokenized products that operate 24/7, often with higher leverage and fewer guardrails.
The real wildcard is volatility. SpaceX has been public for less than a week. There’s no earnings history as a public company, no established trading range, and no options chain history to anchor implied volatility expectations. Market makers pricing these contracts on day one are essentially flying blind, which means premiums could be expensive.
The risk for options traders is straightforward: a freshly public company with a $1.77 trillion valuation has a lot of expectations priced in. The fact that crypto markets were pricing SpaceX at $203 before the IPO while shares actually debuted at $135 suggests that at least some segment of the market has been running on pure adrenaline rather than valuation discipline.