SpaceX Opens for Public Trading Friday With a Live Crypto Tokenized-Equity Stack Behind It

SpaceX begins trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX tomorrow. The same day, a stack of crypto-native tokenized-equity products designed to mirror or redeem against SPCX goes live in parallel.

SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share on Thursday, offering roughly 555.6 million shares for a $75 billion raise at a $1.75 trillion valuation, the largest IPO on record. Crypto-native exposure has built ahead of the bell on rails spanning institutional TRS desks to retail DeFi wrappers: Ondo Finance's SPCXon, Kraken's xStocks SPCXx, a Backpack Securities-issued SPCX token routed to Solana through SunriseDefi, and a Galaxy Digital total return swap referencing an on-chain SpaceX perpetual for institutional counterparties.

Hyperliquid's pre-IPO SPCX perpetual, deployed by Trade.xyz, holds over $190 million in open interest and converts to a standard stock-linked perpetual once Nasdaq trading begins.

Friday's open is the first time a marquee IPO has had a simultaneous on-chain equity market issued by a regulated brokerage, alongside a separate regulated tokenized-equity wrapper, alongside a live pre-IPO derivatives book waiting to settle into spot.

Ondo Finance SPCXon

Ondo Finance is listing SPCXon through its Global Markets platform, which is designed to bring public equities on-chain the same day they list on traditional exchanges. The product is backed 1:1 by SpaceX shares held in regulated custody and operates as a total-return tracker, with mint and redeem windows available to non-U.S. users via wallets including MetaMask on Ethereum and Solana.

Ondo's own SPCX allocation registration page is live for retail interest, and DEXTools reported that tokenized SPCX exposure from Ondo, Backed Finance, and Dinari will arrive on Ethereum, Solana, and Base within hours of the Nasdaq open. Ondo and xStocks already lead the tokenized-equity category on Ethereum, per recent Defiant reporting.

Kraken xStocks Settlement

Kraken's xStocks framework is offering SPCXx, a 1:1 backed tokenized representation of SpaceX equity, to customers in 110-plus supported regions including the European Economic Area, per Kraken's blog. Eligible users submitted indications of interest at the IPO price range; successful allocations land in Kraken balances on the listing day and trade 24/7 across Kraken and other xStocks Alliance venues.

"From today, someone in 110 countries can register for SpaceX from their phone, and the moment it lists they trade it: nights, weekends, no waiting for an opening bell," Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in Kraken's announcement. xStocks are issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited against shares in regulated custody, the same legal structure Defiant has previously detailed. xStocks are not available to U.S., UK, Canadian, or Australian users.

SunriseDefi and Backpack Securities Bring 24/7 Solana Redemption

Backpack Securities is issuing a separate SPCX token on Solana, with SunriseDefi routing the asset onchain and Meteora seeding the liquidity layer. Each token corresponds to one real SpaceX share purchased and custodied by Backpack Securities, a regulated U.S. brokerage, and holders can redeem the token for the underlying equity and move those shares to a traditional brokerage through ACATS and DTCC settlement rails. The mechanics were confirmed via the Solana Foundation's official account and amplified by Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.

SunriseDefi is built on Wormhole and has coordinated more than $360 million in spot volume across six prior tokenized launches; for SPCX it brings the asset to Solana DeFi from the first moment of listing.

Galaxy Digital's Total Return Swap for Institutional Counterparties

Galaxy Digital said it structured a total return swap referencing a perpetual contract linked to SpaceX's market-implied valuation, an institutional pattern that sits alongside the retail and DeFi-native wrappers going live the same day. A total return swap is a bilateral derivative in which one party pays the total economic return of a reference asset and the other pays a financing leg, so counterparties get the price exposure without holding the underlying.

The transaction is cash-settled and does not provide ownership of, rights to acquire, or delivery of SpaceX securities, with Galaxy noting it conducts security-based derivatives activity solely with eligible institutional counterparties.

"How does a TradFi hedge fund gain synthetic exposure to private-company valuation trends before a public listing? Onchain, via derivatives instruments already traded by institutions," Galaxy wrote, describing the swap as a structure that lets institutional clients access SpaceX valuation moves through the same on-chain perpetual venues fueling retail tokenized-equity demand.

The Galaxy structure rounds out the institutional layer of the same stress-test Ondo SPCXon, Kraken xStocks, and the Backpack-SunriseDefi Solana token are putting on the retail and DeFi-native side: pricing for a single equity event is now discoverable across regulated tokenized wrappers, on-chain perpetuals, and bilateral institutional swaps, all settling against the same underlying reference.

Hyperliquid Pre-IPO Perp Settles Into Spot

The largest on-chain pre-IPO market for SpaceX sits on Hyperliquid. Trade.xyz deployed the SPCX-USDC perpetual on May 18 at a $150 reference price implying a $1.78 trillion valuation, and the contract now accounts for 94% of HIP-3 open interest on Hyperliquid per Arkham Intelligence. At Thursday morning, SPCX on Hyperliquid was implying a $2.01 trillion valuation at $154 per share, roughly 14% above the IPO price. Active positions transition to a standard stock-linked perp once Nasdaq trading begins, in the same conversion path the Cerebras pre-IPO contract took in May.

What to Watch at the Bell

The xStocks and Backpack tokens both depend on shares purchased through normal IPO channels landing in regulated custody before allocations are minted on-chain; the time between Nasdaq's first print and the first on-chain mint is the gating telemetry for both products.

Ondo's SPCXon will publish daily custody attestations once live, per its Global Markets design. The Hyperliquid perp converts mechanically once SpaceX's spot price is established, and the reference rate that perpetual settles to is also the rate Galaxy's institutional TRS will mark against.

Whether the cross-product basis between SPCXon, SPCXx, the Solana SPCX token, the Hyperliquid perp, and Galaxy's swap reference tightens through the first 24 hours is the cleanest test of how well the crypto-native tokenized-equity stack actually mirrors the underlying equity.