06/10 update below. This post was originally published on June 09
Bitcoin and crypto prices have swung wildly over the last few weeks, with bitcoin teetering on the brink of a “big” Wall Street move.
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The bitcoin price has dropped to just over $60,000 per bitcoin, down more than 50% from its all-time high reached in October last year (even as president Donald Trump’s White House gears up for a massive crypto game-changer).
Now, as JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon issues a stark crypto warning, Elon Musk’s imminent SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) has been named as the “next real catalyst” for the bitcoin price.
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SpaceX and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk could be about to trigger bitcoin’s next price boom.
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“The next real catalyst is SpaceX coming to market on June 12,” analysts with the crypto market maker Wintermute posted to X.
“It’s a clean gauge of retail and risk appetite: constructive if the placement is digested well, bearish for the whole complex if it shows exhaustion.”
That appetite appears healthy, with the rocket and artificial intelligence company’s IPO well oversubscribed with multiple institutional investors placing orders for about $10 billion or more of shares, it was reported by Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources.
06/10 update: The SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is running at three and a half to four times the planned offering size, according to a Reuters report, citing anonymous sources.
The company’s IPO roadshow has drawn $250 billion of investor demand, smashing the $75 billion that Elon Musk was seeking to raise, with some pointing to traders chasing huge AI-related opportunities as the cause for the decline in the bitcoin price and wider crypto market.
“Bitcoin still may offer some diversification from the unusual singular AI driven momentum markets we have experienced this year,” analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote in the Monday report seen by Coindesk.
However, others see bitcoin as standing apart from the rest of the market.
“I’ll take a contrarian position: the SpaceX IPO will neither be good nor bad for bitcoin,” newsletter author Lark Davis wrote in a note.
“Bitcoin is currently marching to its own 4-year cycle drum (as the data clearly shows), and the forces propelling this cycle have long pre-dated this IPO. Moreover, bitcoin and SpaceX are two completely separate assets, with different use-cases and value propositions. They don’t compete for the same capital bucket, and treating them like they do misses the bigger picture of bitcoin entirely.”
For true believers, the flood of money being poured into SpaceX and AI companies is merely evidence that bitcoin remains the best bet.
“In the face of the onslaught of AI narratives undermining trust of traditional systems, bitcoin remains the soundest money, and the resilience of its proof of work architecture has been demonstrated,” FundStrat head of research Tom Lee, who also leads the ethereum treasuery company BitMine, said in comments reported by CNBC.
SpaceX, led by billionaire Elon Musk who is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire following the IPO, is due to be priced on Thursday before beginning trading on Friday.
The company, which has revealed that it holds far more bitcoin than previously thought, is offering 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of $135 each, which would raise about $75 billion, and value SpaceX at around $1.75 trillion.
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The bitcoin price has dropped back from a rebound, with bitcoin and crypto market watchers nervously watching for the “next catalyst.”
Forbes Digital Assets
The gravitational pull of the AI investment boom, with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Claude developer Anthropic hot on SpaceX’s heels, has sucked liquidity from the market, with some blaming these three looming IPOs and the likes of Google’s Alphabet tapping the market for $80 billion earlier this month for the bitcoin price sell-off.
“An overall lack of buzz around crypto as all things AI-related came under the investor spotlight, led to crypto outflows,” David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation, said in emailed comments.
“The question now is how investors position themselves following Friday’s steep selloff across semiconductor and other tech stocks. This is particularly important given this Friday’s SpaceX IPO.”