Elon Musk is preparing to take SpaceX public at a valuation that would make it one of the most valuable companies on the planet before it even starts trading. The target: somewhere between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion.

To put that in perspective, only a handful of companies in history have ever touched the $2T mark. Apple needed decades of consumer electronics dominance to get there. Musk wants SpaceX to arrive at the doorstep on day one.

What we know about the listing

Musk has signaled expectations of raising up to $75 billion in the offering, with the headline valuation exceeding $2 trillion. On private secondary markets, the company is already being priced in that neighborhood. Forge Global, a platform that facilitates pre-IPO share trading, lists SpaceX shares at $650.66 per share, a figure that aligns with trillion-dollar-plus territory.

This would not be a typical tech IPO. SpaceX operates in aerospace, defense, and satellite internet through its Starlink division. Its revenue streams are diversified across government launch contracts, commercial satellite deployment, and broadband subscriptions for millions of users globally. The combination of recurring revenue from Starlink and high-margin government contracts is what gives bulls their thesis.

Musk’s broader pitch leans heavily on two narratives: artificial intelligence and Mars colonization. Whether you find the Mars timeline credible or not, the AI angle has substance. SpaceX’s satellite infrastructure could serve as backbone connectivity for AI-driven systems, autonomous vehicles, and remote computing nodes. It’s the kind of story that gets growth investors to stop reading the P/E ratio.

Crypto is already trading the hype

Here’s where things get interesting for digital asset markets. A pre-IPO perpetual futures contract has appeared on Hyperliquid, the decentralized perpetuals exchange, under the ticker SPCX. The contract allows traders to speculate on SpaceX’s equity valuation before shares are available on any stock exchange.

Initial pricing on the SPCX perp implied a valuation north of $2.5 trillion. In English: crypto traders are pricing SpaceX at a premium to what even Musk himself is reportedly targeting. That’s either extreme bullishness or the kind of leverage-fueled enthusiasm that Hyperliquid has become known for. Probably a bit of both.

The existence of this market is notable on its own. Perpetual futures for pre-IPO equities represent a genuinely new financial primitive. Traditionally, getting exposure to a company before it lists required access to private secondary markets like Forge, which typically demand accredited investor status and significant minimums. Hyperliquid’s SPCX contract opens that door to anyone with a crypto wallet and some margin.

Whether regulators will have thoughts about this is a question that answers itself.

The Bitcoin angle

SpaceX reportedly holds approximately $637 million in Bitcoin on its balance sheet. If the IPO proceeds, that would make SpaceX one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin holders, joining the ranks of MicroStrategy and Tesla.

For Bitcoin maximalists, this matters. Every publicly listed company holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet effectively creates a new access point for institutional capital to gain indirect Bitcoin exposure. Pension funds and mutual funds that cannot hold Bitcoin directly can buy shares of companies that do. MicroStrategy has already proven this playbook works, with its stock frequently trading at a premium to the value of its underlying Bitcoin holdings.

SpaceX going public with $637 million in Bitcoin would amplify this dynamic considerably. A $2 trillion company holding Bitcoin carries a different kind of signal than a mid-cap enterprise software firm doing the same thing. It normalizes the practice at the very top of the market capitalization hierarchy.

There’s also the Musk factor. Love him or not, his influence on crypto markets is well-documented. His tweets have moved Dogecoin by double-digit percentages. His companies have a track record of buying and occasionally selling Bitcoin. A SpaceX IPO would put his Bitcoin holdings under the scrutiny of quarterly SEC filings, adding a layer of transparency that private ownership does not require.

Look, a $2 trillion IPO valuation is extraordinary by any standard. The largest IPO in history was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing, which valued the oil giant at $1.7 trillion. Musk is aiming to surpass that with a company that, while enormously successful, still derives much of its valuation from future potential rather than current earnings.

The Hyperliquid futures market pricing SpaceX above $2.5 trillion suggests that speculative appetite is running hot. For crypto-native investors, this creates a rare situation where DeFi infrastructure is providing price discovery on a major equity event before traditional markets can. That is either a preview of finance’s future or a case study in why pre-market pricing can overshoot.

What investors should watch is how the Bitcoin holdings narrative evolves as the IPO approaches. If SpaceX lists and Wall Street analysts begin modeling its BTC position as a line item, it could trigger copycat behavior among other large-cap companies considering treasury diversification. Conversely, if SpaceX liquidates its Bitcoin ahead of listing to clean up its balance sheet, the signal goes the other direction entirely.

The convergence of a record-breaking IPO, a DeFi pre-market, and a major corporate Bitcoin position makes this one of the most consequential financial events for crypto markets in 2025, regardless of whether you ever plan to own a single share of SpaceX stock.