Coinbase, the U.S. listed crypto exchange, is launching its first perpetual pre-IPO futures on SpaceX as the rocket company is expected to be a catalyst for the market.

On 3 June 2026 Coinbase said in a statement that it is launching pre-IPO perpetual futures to give eligible traders price exposure to private companies before they list on public markets.

Pre-IPO perpetuals allow traders to take a view on the  company’s share price once it goes public. They provide a synthetic exposure as they are not shares, IPO allocations, tokenized equity, or claims on the issuer, so holders do not receive ownership, dividends, voting rights, or primary-market allocation rights.

Coinbase said the SpaceX pre-IPO perpetuals marks a milestone for new assets  as it aims to become the “Everything Exchange.” The future is settled with Circle’s USDC stablecoin, with all profits and losses realized directly in USDC. When SpaceX completes its initial public offering, which could be on 12 June 2026, the pre-IPO positions automatically transition to the SpaceX perpetual future.

Coinbase said: “We’re building a pipeline of pre-IPO perpetual futures on Coinbase, with more listings to come across technology, AI, energy, space, and beyond.”

Binance

Crypto exchange Binance had launched pre-IPO perpetuals on 21 May 2026. Shunyet Jan, head of spot and derivatives business at Binance, said in a statement that pre-IPO perpetual futures are another example of democratizing access to market opportunities using crypto-native infrastructure as pre-IPO price discovery has historically been limited to institutional investors and private market participants.

Jan added: “As interest in public listings continues to grow, we’re giving users a more flexible way to engage with anticipated IPOs earlier.”

Binance captured more than 60% category share according to a report from research provider CoinDesk. Daily pre-IPO volume was more than $100m on four of the seven days after launch.

“SpaceX and OpenAI together account for ~90% of all Pre-IPO activity,” said CoinDesk. “The category is effectively a two-name market today, which is both the source of early traction and the reason instrument expansion is the gating factor for sustained growth.”

Price discovery

TradeXYZ, a perpetual futures exchange on the Hyperliquid blockchain, inaugurated the pre-IPO perpetual contract market on 1 May 2026 when it listed a contract for Cerebras Systems, the artificial intelligence chip manufacturer. On 18 May TradeXYZ subsequently launched a SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual futures contract.

0xResearch, a Blockworks newsletter, reviewed the Cerebras Systems (CBRS) pre-IPO perpetual and found that the future provided price discovery ahead of the listing on 14 May 2026.

“Across the final hour before the Nasdaq print, TradeXYZ’s CBRS market traded at a VWAP only 1.2% above the eventual opening price,” said OxResearch. “In the final minute before the cross, CBRS was trading around $360 on TradeXYZ, just 2.8% above Nasdaq’s first print.”

The pre-IPO market processed over $200m in pre-open notional volume at a median spread of 61.4 basis points, which OxResearch described as a “functional’ level of liquidity for a contract with no liquid public reference.

Before listing, there is no public equity price so the pre-IPO perpetual market operates with an internal pricing mechanism. XYZ said in a blog that it launched each pre-IPO perpetual market with a discretionary reference price. The market may also display an initial reference share count and an implied initial reference market cap.

Venture capital firm Pantera said in a blog that Hyperliquid is becoming the exchange on which price discovery happens when all other markets are closed.

“Increasingly, this doesn’t just mean weekends, but also private companies prior to an IPO,” added Pantera. “On the day of Cerebras’ IPO (the largest IPO year-to-date), the banks underwriting the IPO were monitoring prices on Hyperliquid.”

Pantera argued that the next catalyst to watch is the SpaceX IPO, which traded at around $200 per share as of 1 June 2026 on Hyperliquid, above where bankers are rumored to want to price the stock.

“Every market participant is watching this IPO and it’s reasonable to expect that Elon Musk, SpaceX’s well-known terminally online and crypto-supporter CEO, may push both bankers and prospective investors to consider where SpaceX is trading on Hyperliquid, in turn driving a step function increase in awareness for the platform,” added Pantera.