As retail investors prepare to pile into one of the most anticipated public offerings in history, it's not just SpaceX itself that stands to benefit — it’s also Hyperliquid.
Just as was the case with recent tech IPO Cerebras, traders are speculating again on Hyperliquid even before shares begin trading on the Nasdaq.
“We've seen a whole bunch of real world assets meaning equities, oil, gold, silver and now a couple of these pre-IPO things coming onchain via Hyperliquid,” Hyperliquid Strategies CEO David Schamis told Coinage. “But it's just scratching the surface of all the markets that are out there.”
The timing could hardly be better for the surging decentralized exchange. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token has climbed roughly 150% year-to-date, dramatically outperforming Bitcoin as traders increasingly rotate toward what many now view as one of the leading infrastructure plays for tokenized markets.
And according to Schamis, the coming SpaceX IPO may be accelerating that thesis faster than almost anyone expected. Suddenly, if Hyperliquid can prove its the venue to find price discovery for assets even before traditional exchanges it may boost other markets the team is working to add to the platform.
“The idea that we can't have price discovery before an IPO in some real way and that it's not meaningful is obviously ridiculous,” Schamis said.
To his point, there is historical precedent with the Cerebras IPO, which highlighted a glaring problem with the process. Cerebras shares priced above their range of $150 to $160, and surged 108% at the opening bell to $385. As Schamis sees it, maybe Cerebras could've captured more of their fair value if they saw how the market was valuing things on Hyperliquid's pre-IPO market.
"When you have a great company and you want to take it public, you go through the IPO process and it's not a great process," he said. "Hopefully Elon and other people who are very focused on getting this priced at the right level will be looking at this."
According to Schamis, traders on Hyperliquid have already pushed implied SpaceX valuations well above the IPO target ranges being discussed publicly. More importantly, he argues, those markets are increasingly behaving like legitimate institutional price discovery mechanisms rather than speculative crypto side bets.
"When you look at the Cerebras IPO, Hyperliquid did a really nice job of predicting where it would trade post-IPO and I have no reason to believe that it won't be the same case for SpaceX," he said.