BUSINESS

Synthetic markets price SpaceX at $2T ahead of IPO

Sunday, May 24, 2026 · from 3 podcasts

Presidio Bitcoin Jam The Economist FYI (ARK Invest)

Hyperliquid's pre-IPO perpetuals value SpaceX at $2 trillion, well above its rumored IPO valuation.
SpaceX's IPO depends on Starship enabling orbital AI data centers to justify its price.
The speed of specialized crypto chains threatens the traditional IPO pricing process.

Investment banks no longer set the price. Hyperliquid's perpetual contracts, which let traders bet on private companies, are valuing SpaceX at $2 trillion - a 30% premium to the rumored IPO valuation. On FYI, Lorenzo argued that synthetic markets like this can accurately price companies before they go public, citing Cerebras, where the crypto market predicted the stock's opening price more accurately than bankers.

These markets are gaining influence because of their speed. Hyperliquid built its own chain to handle perpetual contracts, capturing 80% market share. Lorenzo noted the platform processes nearly $3 trillion in annual volume with a 15-person team. When shadow market open interest exceeds a company's tender offer volume, its price becomes the real price.

That price hinges on SpaceX's transformation from a rocket company to an AI infrastructure provider. On The Intelligence, Tim Cross described the firm's IPO as a pivot toward orbital data centers, with a valuation set at $1.75 trillion, 90 times its 2025 revenue. Starlink is profitable, but xAI - merged into SpaceX last year - lost $6.4 billion in 2025, more than Starlink's total profit.

"Elon Musk is no longer selling rockets; he is selling a space-based AI future."
- Tim Cross, The Intelligence

The plan requires Starship. Cross explained that Falcon 9 cannot carry the oversized satellites needed for orbital compute. If Starship achieves full reusability, launch costs could drop from $4,000 per kilo to $200, making space-based AI financially viable.

Investors are betting on that future. The synthetic markets reflect a belief that SpaceX can solve terrestrial bottlenecks like data center permitting and power constraints by moving compute to orbit, using free sunlight.

"If the betting volume on Hyperliquid exceeds the size of a company’s private buyback offer, the shadow price becomes the real price."
- Lorenzo, FYI

The process is accelerating. As these markets grow, they could dictate how investment banks price new stock offerings, upending the traditional IPO.

3 Sources:

Presidio Bitcoin Jam The Economist FYI (ARK Invest)

#AI Infrastructure #Markets #Startups

Elon Musk SpaceX xAI Starlink

Source Intelligence

- Deep dive into what was said in the episodes

Presidio Bitcoin Jam

MSTR/STRC Outlook, Bitcoin's Security Budget & AI, Evaluating the Nation-State Threat • May 22

Steve argues Stacker News has a higher average IQ and less toxicity than Twitter, leaning towards builders interested in technology rather than financialization.
Robin Linus compared MicroStrategy to SBF on steroids, implying fraud. Steve and Max counter there's no evidence funds aren't held in Bitcoin, with custody at Coinbase providing contrary evidence.
Steve acknowledges MicroStrategy owning 4% of Bitcoin is unhealthy for decentralization. He argues concentration in a public company is preferable to a single whale due to corporate governance.
Max outlines the Stretch risk profile. It currently has 38.6 years of dividend coverage from its Bitcoin holdings, but this safety shrinks if Stretch AUM grows faster than Bitcoin appreciates.
Max identifies key Stretch risks: custodial hack at Coinbase, and the growth of DeFi loops which comprise 4% of Stretch AUM and could create systemic leverage.
Steve highlights a fundamental difference between Stretch and algorithmic stables: Stretch has no deposit/redemption guarantee. Liquidity comes from market makers, not MicroStrategy, preventing a bank-run scenario.
Max states the MicroStrategy equity thesis bets on Bitcoin-per-share growth, not just Bitcoin price. Data shows Bitcoin per share grew from 0.7 to 2.1 over four years and is up 12% year-to-date in 2025.
Max observes Bitcoin's hash rate is in a bear market, down from over 1 zettahash to around 900 exahashes. He attributes this to miners shifting capacity to AI compute, which may decentralize mining long-term.
Steve reveals SpaceX holds over 18,000 Bitcoin on its balance sheet, a fact he learned was public this week.

Also from this episode: (3)

Protocol (3)

Steve argues proof-of-work that also performs 'useful' computation is fundamentally incompatible with Bitcoin's security. It distorts fairness and creates a vector for attack if compute can be switched to mining.
Max critiques Eric Budish's security budget model as too simplistic. It incorrectly assumes hash rate can be rented at will and ignores price elasticity, operational complexity, and the reality of acquiring energy contracts.
Steve is more concerned about a sovereign nation-state 51% attack from the US or China than an economically rational one. He notes it's politically untenable for the US now due to widespread pension plan adoption.

#BTC Markets #Mining #Macro #AI Infrastructure

The Intelligence from The Economist

Big boosts to fill: SpaceX’s giant IPO • May 22

Tim Cross explains SpaceX plans a $75 billion IPO, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation that would make it a top-10 global company and the largest public offering in history.
SpaceX's valuation has grown tenfold in two years and now trades at roughly 90 times its revenue, compared to Tesla's 16 times revenue multiple.
Cross breaks SpaceX into three businesses: launch services handling 90% of global payloads, the profitable Starlink internet service, and the money-losing xAI lab.
Starlink, with nearly 10,000 satellites and 10 million customers, reported a $4.4 billion profit in 2025, while xAI lost $6.4 billion the same year.
Cross says SpaceX's vision hinges on Starship achieving full reusability to slash orbital launch costs below $100 per kilogram, enabling Starlink growth and space-based AI data centers.
SpaceX ambitions include factories building 1,000 Starships annually, a 20,000-fold boost to global launch capacity, and an incentive structure for Musk targeting up to a $6 trillion valuation.
Robert Guest notes Trump's approval among young men has collapsed from nearly 50% in 2024 to about 30% now, as economic concerns over tariffs and inflation outweigh his masculine branding.
Canadian provinces banned American alcohol in retaliation for tariffs, causing US wine sales there to fall nearly 80% in 2025.

Also from this episode: (6)

Elections (3)

Guest cites polls showing young men who voted Trump rank having children as a top life goal, but find it economically unfeasible due to his policies on tariffs and the Iran war increasing costs.
Guest says young men feel spurned by Democrats, with an Economist/YouGov poll finding over half of Americans see an anti-male bias in the Democratic Party.
A Harvard poll shows young men are now swing voters: 33% back Democrats, 25% back Republicans, and 38% are undecided or won't vote.

Society (1)

Guest argues expensive housing is a key policy failure keeping young men from starting families, and removing construction obstacles could address their frustration.

History (1)

Alexandra Siewicz Bass recounts the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting, where Californian wines beat French classics, sparking a quintupling of American wine exports between 1975 and 1980.

Business (1)

Bass says Bordeaux's crisis stems from a bubble of overproduction for Chinese clients that burst after Xi Jinping's anti-corruption crackdown, while Napa suffers from relying on aging baby boomers and Canadian tariff retaliation.

#AI Infrastructure #Markets #Elections #Trade #Startups

FYI — For Your Innovation (ARK Invest)

Hyperliquid And SpaceX Synthetic Trading | The Brainstorm EP 132 • May 20

Lorenzo identifies Hyperliquid as the biggest derivatives exchange in crypto, bootstrapped without VC capital and built by a small team.
Hyperliquid is a purpose-built layer-1 blockchain for perpetual futures, not built on Ethereum or Solana, offering centralized exchange-like latency and trader experience.
Hyperliquid generates nearly $3 trillion in annual volume, a single-digit percentage of Binance's volume, and runs at a $1 billion revenue run rate with a team of only 15 people.
HIP-3, or 'builder codes,' lets anyone launch a perpetual market by staking Hyperliquid's HYPE tokens, licensing the exchange's core technology to third parties.
Trade XYZ, a HIP-3 market, launched perpetuals on commodities, indices, and pre-IPO stocks, capturing up to 2-3% of CME's volume during the Iran war when traditional markets were closed.
Trade XYZ's SpaceX perpetual market is synthetic and has no claim to equity. Its price uses a time-weighted average of its own order book as an oracle, lacking a real spot price.
Cerebras's pre-IPO perpetual on Trade XYZ priced at $240, closely matching its first-day public trading price of ~$250, while its IPO priced at only $180.
Trade XYZ's SpaceX market trades at ~$200, implying a $2 trillion valuation and a 30% premium to the rumored $1.7 trillion IPO price of $150 per share.
Trade XYZ geoblocks US users from its main crypto markets. Trading futures on non-public equities like SpaceX is illegal in the US, so the platform primarily serves overseas sophisticated users and hedge funds.
Lorenzo says perpetuals are the most profitable product in crypto. He expects stiff competition from centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken launching their own perpetual products.
Lorenzo suggests trade XYZ and similar pre-IPO perpetual markets could eventually rival prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, especially for financial products where leverage and cross-margin are desired.
Lorenzo posits that if pre-IPO perpetual open interest surpasses tender offer volumes, these synthetic markets could begin to influence real-world IPO pricing and secondary transactions.

#Markets #VC

Source Intelligence

- Deep dive into what was said in the episodes

Presidio Bitcoin Jam

MSTR/STRC Outlook, Bitcoin's Security Budget & AI, Evaluating the Nation-State Threat • May 22

Steve argues Stacker News has a higher average IQ and less toxicity than Twitter, leaning towards builders interested in technology rather than financialization.
Robin Linus compared MicroStrategy to SBF on steroids, implying fraud. Steve and Max counter there's no evidence funds aren't held in Bitcoin, with custody at Coinbase providing contrary evidence.
Steve acknowledges MicroStrategy owning 4% of Bitcoin is unhealthy for decentralization. He argues concentration in a public company is preferable to a single whale due to corporate governance.
Max outlines the Stretch risk profile. It currently has 38.6 years of dividend coverage from its Bitcoin holdings, but this safety shrinks if Stretch AUM grows faster than Bitcoin appreciates.
Max identifies key Stretch risks: custodial hack at Coinbase, and the growth of DeFi loops which comprise 4% of Stretch AUM and could create systemic leverage.
Steve highlights a fundamental difference between Stretch and algorithmic stables: Stretch has no deposit/redemption guarantee. Liquidity comes from market makers, not MicroStrategy, preventing a bank-run scenario.
Max states the MicroStrategy equity thesis bets on Bitcoin-per-share growth, not just Bitcoin price. Data shows Bitcoin per share grew from 0.7 to 2.1 over four years and is up 12% year-to-date in 2025.
Max observes Bitcoin's hash rate is in a bear market, down from over 1 zettahash to around 900 exahashes. He attributes this to miners shifting capacity to AI compute, which may decentralize mining long-term.
Steve reveals SpaceX holds over 18,000 Bitcoin on its balance sheet, a fact he learned was public this week.

Also from this episode: (3)

Protocol (3)

Steve argues proof-of-work that also performs 'useful' computation is fundamentally incompatible with Bitcoin's security. It distorts fairness and creates a vector for attack if compute can be switched to mining.
Max critiques Eric Budish's security budget model as too simplistic. It incorrectly assumes hash rate can be rented at will and ignores price elasticity, operational complexity, and the reality of acquiring energy contracts.
Steve is more concerned about a sovereign nation-state 51% attack from the US or China than an economically rational one. He notes it's politically untenable for the US now due to widespread pension plan adoption.

#BTC Markets #Mining #Macro #AI Infrastructure

The Intelligence from The Economist

Big boosts to fill: SpaceX’s giant IPO • May 22

Tim Cross explains SpaceX plans a $75 billion IPO, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation that would make it a top-10 global company and the largest public offering in history.
SpaceX's valuation has grown tenfold in two years and now trades at roughly 90 times its revenue, compared to Tesla's 16 times revenue multiple.
Cross breaks SpaceX into three businesses: launch services handling 90% of global payloads, the profitable Starlink internet service, and the money-losing xAI lab.
Starlink, with nearly 10,000 satellites and 10 million customers, reported a $4.4 billion profit in 2025, while xAI lost $6.4 billion the same year.
Cross says SpaceX's vision hinges on Starship achieving full reusability to slash orbital launch costs below $100 per kilogram, enabling Starlink growth and space-based AI data centers.
SpaceX ambitions include factories building 1,000 Starships annually, a 20,000-fold boost to global launch capacity, and an incentive structure for Musk targeting up to a $6 trillion valuation.
Robert Guest notes Trump's approval among young men has collapsed from nearly 50% in 2024 to about 30% now, as economic concerns over tariffs and inflation outweigh his masculine branding.
Canadian provinces banned American alcohol in retaliation for tariffs, causing US wine sales there to fall nearly 80% in 2025.

Also from this episode: (6)

Elections (3)

Guest cites polls showing young men who voted Trump rank having children as a top life goal, but find it economically unfeasible due to his policies on tariffs and the Iran war increasing costs.
Guest says young men feel spurned by Democrats, with an Economist/YouGov poll finding over half of Americans see an anti-male bias in the Democratic Party.
A Harvard poll shows young men are now swing voters: 33% back Democrats, 25% back Republicans, and 38% are undecided or won't vote.

Society (1)

Guest argues expensive housing is a key policy failure keeping young men from starting families, and removing construction obstacles could address their frustration.

History (1)

Alexandra Siewicz Bass recounts the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting, where Californian wines beat French classics, sparking a quintupling of American wine exports between 1975 and 1980.

Business (1)

Bass says Bordeaux's crisis stems from a bubble of overproduction for Chinese clients that burst after Xi Jinping's anti-corruption crackdown, while Napa suffers from relying on aging baby boomers and Canadian tariff retaliation.

#AI Infrastructure #Markets #Elections #Trade #Startups

FYI — For Your Innovation (ARK Invest)

Hyperliquid And SpaceX Synthetic Trading | The Brainstorm EP 132 • May 20

Lorenzo identifies Hyperliquid as the biggest derivatives exchange in crypto, bootstrapped without VC capital and built by a small team.
Hyperliquid is a purpose-built layer-1 blockchain for perpetual futures, not built on Ethereum or Solana, offering centralized exchange-like latency and trader experience.
Hyperliquid generates nearly $3 trillion in annual volume, a single-digit percentage of Binance's volume, and runs at a $1 billion revenue run rate with a team of only 15 people.
HIP-3, or 'builder codes,' lets anyone launch a perpetual market by staking Hyperliquid's HYPE tokens, licensing the exchange's core technology to third parties.
Trade XYZ, a HIP-3 market, launched perpetuals on commodities, indices, and pre-IPO stocks, capturing up to 2-3% of CME's volume during the Iran war when traditional markets were closed.
Trade XYZ's SpaceX perpetual market is synthetic and has no claim to equity. Its price uses a time-weighted average of its own order book as an oracle, lacking a real spot price.
Cerebras's pre-IPO perpetual on Trade XYZ priced at $240, closely matching its first-day public trading price of ~$250, while its IPO priced at only $180.
Trade XYZ's SpaceX market trades at ~$200, implying a $2 trillion valuation and a 30% premium to the rumored $1.7 trillion IPO price of $150 per share.
Trade XYZ geoblocks US users from its main crypto markets. Trading futures on non-public equities like SpaceX is illegal in the US, so the platform primarily serves overseas sophisticated users and hedge funds.
Lorenzo says perpetuals are the most profitable product in crypto. He expects stiff competition from centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken launching their own perpetual products.
Lorenzo suggests trade XYZ and similar pre-IPO perpetual markets could eventually rival prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, especially for financial products where leverage and cross-margin are desired.
Lorenzo posits that if pre-IPO perpetual open interest surpasses tender offer volumes, these synthetic markets could begin to influence real-world IPO pricing and secondary transactions.

#Markets #VC

Synthetic markets price SpaceX at $2T ahead of IPO

Source Intelligence

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Synthetic markets price SpaceX at $2T ahead of IPO

Source Intelligence

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