Elon Musk’s SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq last Friday at a valuation of over 1.7 trillion USD. The highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) sparked a massive trading frenzy on Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange. The exchange’s HIP-3 perpetual contract for SPCX recorded 1.4 billion USD in trading volume on the day of the debut, accounting for 30% of all HIP-3 volume during that session.
Prior to the IPO, the SPCX contract had averaged a daily volume of just 26 million USD. The sudden surge in volume reflects a broader trend within the HIP-3 ecosystem, where stock-linked perpetual contracts saw over 18.8 billion USD in volume during the first half of June. In comparison, crude oil and Brent crude oil contracts combined saw just 7.66 billion USD in volume.
The shift from commodity perpetuals to equity perpetuals has been driven by increased volatility and a correction in the broader U.S. stock market. Because Hyperliquid offers 24/7 speculation and hedging on U.S. equities outside of standard market hours, it has captured substantial open interest and fee revenue from centralized exchanges and traditional CFD venues.
This growing volume has also created a key dependency for the Hyperliquid platform. The Trade.xyz protocol drives a significant portion of the platform’s utility token (HYPE) buybacks through fee distribution. On the day of SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut, the price of the HYPE token rose by approximately 10%. Meanwhile, centralized exchanges like Bybit, Binance, and Bitget were forced to cancel their planned allocations of tokenized SpaceX shares and issue refunds after failing to secure enough underlying shares to fulfill customer subscriptions.