Key Takeaways
- Gate’s tokenized SPCX token logged $332M and $360M in volume on August 4-5 ahead of the unlock.
- SpaceX stock closed up 6.1% at $114.92 on August 6 despite 911.5 million shares unlocking.
- Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas called the unlock an entry point, with Bernstein targeting $248.
A $700 Million Bet on One Day’s News
Gate’s tokenized SPCX product lets crypto traders worldwide gain price exposure to SpaceX without holding the underlying Nasdaq-listed stock directly, and its volume closely tracks whatever is moving the real equity. On August 4 and 5 alone, that token generated $332 million and $360 million in trading volume, respectively, as traders positioned ahead of the largest share unlock since SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO).
Similar tokenized exposure exists on Kraken and Bybit, where SPCX shares are offered to non-U.S. users as SPCXx tokens issued by Backed Assets and backed 1:1 by shares held in third-party custody, part of a wider trend of exchanges wrapping newly listed equities like SpaceX and Nvidia into 1:1 crypto-tradable tokens.
The catalyst was straightforward, i.e. 911.5 million Class A shares held by early employees and pre-IPO investors became eligible for sale on August 6, more than doubling SpaceX’s public float from 4.9% of shares outstanding to 11.8%.
That kind of supply shock typically pressures a stock lower as newly unlocked holders look to cash out, and tokenized markets like Gate’s SPCX often see volume spike as traders try to front-run or hedge against the move.
The Unlock That Didn’t Crash the Stock
What made this unlock notable wasn’t the volume but the outcome. SpaceX shares had already sunk almost 14% the day before, on August 5, their second-worst single-day drop on record, closing at an all-time low of $108.27 amid concerns over the company’s Q2 earnings. Revenue had actually jumped 92% year-over-year to $7.8 billion, but investors focused instead on $23.6 billion in planned AI-related capital expenditures and uncertainty around a cancelable contract in SpaceX’s AI division.
Against that backdrop, conventional wisdom said adding nearly a billion freshly tradable shares the very next day should have compounded the selling. Instead, SpaceX stock closed August 6 up 6.1% at roughly $114.92 and is currently trading at $133.11.
That said, the stock remains well below both its $135 IPO price from June 12 and its 52-week high near $225.64, but the fact that the market’s biggest single-day supply increase to date didn’t trigger a fresh leg down gave bulls a reason to argue the worst of the post-IPO selling has been priced in.
Wall Street Still Bullish, and a Bitcoin Wrinkle
Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas postured the lockup expiration as an entry opportunity rather than a warning sign, describing SpaceX as a potential “generational compounder.” Argus Research upgraded the stock to buy with a $160 target while Citi kept a buy rating with a $200 target after SpaceX’s AI-segment earnings beat estimates by roughly $1.5 billion. Lastly, Bernstein raised its target to $248, more than double where the stock trades today.
There’s a crypto-specific wrinkle to the SpaceX story that goes beyond tokenized trading. The company’s own IPO paperwork disclosed a corporate bitcoin treasury of 18,712 BTC, acquired years ago for about $661 million and worth roughly $1.29 billion at the time of filing, a position that ranks SpaceX among the ten largest known public-company bitcoin holders, ahead of Coinbase and Riot Platforms.
Musk’s other public company, Tesla, holds a further 11,509 BTC. Not only that, his own SpaceX shares, representing more than 40% of the company, stay locked up separately until June 12, 2027, meaning the founder himself won’t be a source of unlock-driven selling pressure for another year regardless of how the rest of the float trades.
