Some online discussions appear to speculate that retail investors could sell cryptocurrencies to pursue the largest IPO ever.
SpaceX, the rocket, satellite and AI company owned by Elon Musk, is selling up to 30% of its record $75 billion offering directly to retail investors through Robinhood, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, more than three times the share a typical IPO reserves for individuals.
The roadshow opened Thursday, already oversubscribed, with more orders than shares on offer, Bloomberg reported. It offers shares worth $1.8 trillion.
Bitcoin fell about 16% over the same period and briefly traded below $60,000 before returning to around $61,000, according to CoinDesk data.
Stablecoins are the most direct way to track money leaving crypto for dollars. A trader who cashes out Bitcoin to fund a brokerage account converts it to a dollar-pegged token like USDC or Tether, then exchanges it for cash. This manifests itself in two ways, as stablecoins have successfully traded and, later, a decrease in supply as issuers burn the repurchased tokens.
None of these readings show anomalies, according to data evaluated by CoinDesk. Outflows for USDC and Tether remained within the range they have held since February, according to data from CryptoQuant. The biggest days in recent months were $2.5 billion in USDC on May 22 and $3.6 billion in Tether on May 20, both of which occurred before the sell-off.
Bitcoin and Ether saw large withdrawals on Friday, with 66,470 Bitcoin and approximately 2.49 million Ether leaving exchanges, among the largest single-day totals of the year according to CryptoQuant data.
An outflow is coins leaving an exchange for a private wallet, which a buyer does after taking delivery. Selling does the opposite, with coins being transferred to exchanges to be sold.
On-chain data, however, has a blind spot. It can’t see inside a Robinhood or Coinbase account, where someone can sell bitcoins for dollars without ever touching a public blockchain.
It won’t be possible to determine whether cryptocurrency holders have funded their allocations until brokerages release their own figures. Robinhood releases monthly trading metrics, with June crypto volumes expected in mid-July, and Coinbase breaks out retail activity in second-quarter results later in the month.
Bitcoin and Ether saw large withdrawals on Friday, with 66,470 Bitcoin and approximately 2.49 million Ether leaving exchanges, among the largest single-day totals of the year according to CryptoQuant data.
An outflow is coins leaving an exchange for a private wallet, which a buyer does after taking delivery. Selling does the opposite, with coins being transferred to exchanges to be sold. The week’s biggest flows look like withdrawals and dip buying, not a run for cash.
The only place where money was clearly taken out of crypto was funds.
Spot bitcoin ETFs, the exchange-traded products that directly hold bitcoin, bled for 13 straight sessions through June 3, a record period worth about $4.4 billion before a small inflow of $3 million ended the streak.
Ether ETFs led a longer streak of 17 sessions that broke out on the same day. When investors withdraw money from these funds, the issuer sells the underlying coins, so redemptions constitute a true sale.
SpaceX prices on June 11 and the Nasdaq listing under the ticker SPCX the next day.
