SpaceX went public on June 12, and the numbers are genuinely absurd. The company priced shares at $135, raised approximately $75 billion, and watched its stock climb nearly 20% on debut to close around $161. That pushed SpaceX’s valuation above $2 trillion, making it the largest IPO in history by a comfortable margin.
But the real story isn’t on the NYSE. It’s on Hyperliquid, where synthetic perpetual futures tied to SpaceX generated between $1.3 billion and $1.4 billion in trading volume on day one. Retail investors who couldn’t get their hands on actual shares found a backdoor through crypto derivatives, and they kicked the door wide open.
The IPO retail investors couldn’t actually buy
Retail investors submitted somewhere between $70 billion and $100 billion in orders for SpaceX shares. The available supply was a fraction of that demand. Many retail participants ended up with slivers of shares, if they received any allocation at all.
Institutional investors fared better, as they always do. BlackRock alone put in a $5 billion order, and the oversubscription from large funds was massive.
Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange, launched synthetic perpetual futures contracts (ticker: SPCX) linked to SpaceX’s share price. These instruments don’t grant ownership of actual stock. Instead, they let traders take leveraged long or short positions on the price movement.
The result was $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion in single-day volume on these synthetic contracts.
A lesson in leverage learned the hard way
On May 28, roughly two weeks before SpaceX hit public markets, the SPCX perpetual futures on Hyperliquid experienced a 45% flash crash. Low liquidity in the pre-IPO market meant that a relatively small wave of selling cascaded into forced liquidations. Around $1.5 million in leveraged retail positions were wiped out in the crash.
After the crash, the market recovered. By IPO day, SPCX perps were trading at a premium to the cash market price, reflecting the intense demand from traders who wanted exposure at any cost.
What this means for crypto’s role in traditional finance
HYPE, Hyperliquid’s native token, saw meaningful gains tied to the surge in trading activity. The logic is straightforward: more volume means more trading fees, and more trading fees means the protocol generates more revenue, which theoretically accrues value to token holders.