TechFlow Selected published a review by Lacie Zhang, a researcher at Bitget Wallet, examining the SPCX tokenized subscription attempt through the longer history of crypto-native capital coordination. The article begins with ConstitutionDAO in November 2021, when a group of strangers raised more than $40 million within several days in an effort to buy a first-edition copy of the United States Constitution from 1787. The group ultimately lost at Sotheby’s to a hedge fund billionaire. Even though it did not win the auction, that episode showed many people for the first time that blockchain networks could rapidly aggregate retail capital from around the world and direct it toward a scarce asset.
Four and a half years later, a similar dynamic appeared in a different venue: the U.S. IPO market. On June 12, 2026, SpaceX, trading under the ticker SPCX, listed on Nasdaq. Its opening price was $150, around 11% higher than the indicated IPO subscription price of $135, and the original article described it as the strongest IPO in history. For most users, however, U.S. IPO participation remains behind an invisible gate. They do not have qualified investor status, they do not have traditional brokerage accounts, and they do not have long-term relationships with underwriters. Bitget Wallet once worked with the tokenized stock platform xStocks to open tokenized subscription access to the SPCX IPO, setting an individual allocation range of $10 to $5,000 in an attempt to lower the entry threshold close to zero.
The outcome was not completed as planned. Because xStocks’ upstream underwriting channel failed to obtain the corresponding allocation, the underlying shares for the tokenized subscription could not be delivered on schedule, and the attempt ended with refunds. The review argues that this result is precisely a useful entry point for understanding the real situation of on-chain Pre-IPO participation. Blockchain’s global distribution capability already exists, but at the decisive point of allocation, it still faces rules designed and controlled by traditional finance.
Allocation authority remains with traditional syndicates
Tokenized IPO subscription is, in essence, the tokenized distribution of IPO allocations that originate in the traditional brokerage and underwriting system. On-chain channels can place the subscription interface on a blockchain: users can participate from anywhere, without opening a brokerage account, and with stablecoins. What tokenization cannot change is that the decision over IPO allocation still sits with the traditional financial syndicate. In the SpaceX case, the joint bookrunners included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citi, JPMorgan and other top investment banks. These institutions organized bookbuilding, aggregated demand and made the final decisions on allocation.
According to the article, the allocation logic of traditional IPOs follows a hierarchy that favors institutions, relationships and long-term clients. Underwriters tend to prioritize institutional customers with large order sizes and a record of stable holding. The more scarce and sought-after an IPO is, the more visible this preference becomes. SpaceX was oversubscribed by around four times, and BlackRock alone placed an order of about $5 billion. That left extremely limited room for crypto-native channels. As a result, blockchain may have powerful global distribution, but it cannot bypass the first-market allocation mechanism.
The review sets out two broad ways to break through this constraint. The first is for crypto-friendly institutions to gradually enter traditional underwriting networks, using licenses, capital strength and long-term accumulation to gain institutional positions in primary markets. The second is to push assets to be issued natively on-chain from the source, thereby bypassing the existing IPO allocation system altogether. Until these two routes are established, tokenized IPO subscription will continue to face a supply-side ceiling.
An unfinished delivery that became an on-chain stress test
Although delivery failed, the industry-wide attempt still produced real signals in two areas. On the demand side, more than $800 million in subscription funds gathered in a short period of time from ordinary users around the world, all directed toward an asset that traditional channels had almost completely closed to them. Assets like SpaceX are blocked by geographic limits, qualified investor requirements and brokerage account rules. The on-chain entry point required only a wallet and stablecoins. The article also notes that on-chain participation can offer flexibility after allocation that traditional channels often do not provide. Traditional IPO allocations are usually tied to anti-flipping constraints; investors who quickly sell after receiving shares can face clawbacks of commissions or blacklisting. Tokenized assets generally do not impose compulsory lockups and can be freely traded once received.
On the execution side, the process gave Bitget Wallet’s infrastructure a live stress test. With its self-developed DEX aggregator and multi-chain gas payment support, the subscription was expanded to USDC and USDT across five chains. Users could participate with stablecoins on any major chain without handling cross-chain swaps themselves, and they were not blocked by the absence of a native gas token. The article states that this setup provided technical support for more than $13 million in on-chain subscriptions in less than half an hour.
After the delivery failure was confirmed, full refunds were completed in about four hours. The refunds covered principal, fees and exchange-rate differences, and required no action from users. More importantly, every refund, every reconciliation and every status change was an actual on-chain transaction and publicly verifiable. Compared with refund processes at traditional brokerages that rely on internal ledgers and manual coordination, this stress test displayed a clear difference in transparency and execution efficiency.
Tokenized IPO subscription and Pre-IPO perpetuals serve different users
Because tokenized IPOs still do not change how primary-market asset supply is allocated, the review frames them less as unlimited permissionless access and more as a stablecoin-based transformation of the traditional IPO participation process. When subscription demand exceeds the actual allocation, oversubscription, lotteries, pro-rata allocation and even full refunds become part of the normal operating pattern. The article then contrasts this model with another tool: Pre-IPO perpetual contracts, or Perps.
The two instruments serve different preferences. Tokenized IPO subscription is closer to a spot structure. It is backed by real underlying assets and is suited to users with lower risk appetite who do not want to take leverage risk or suffer funding-fee drag. Its trade-off is limited supply, along with the possibility of oversubscription lotteries or full refunds. Pre-IPO Perps do not wait for allocation, do not depend on underwriter distribution and do not require delivery of real stock. They trade directly around the expected price of an unlisted asset. That gives them greater flexibility, while users must accept leverage and high volatility risk.
The review also highlights the price discovery function already shown by Pre-IPO Perps. SPCX perpetual contracts had traded 24/7 on venues including Hyperliquid since May 18, several weeks before the official June 12 listing. Near the listing, the volume-weighted average price across venues was around $155, about 15% above the $135 issue price. The first official listed trade took place at $150, showing that the on-chain market had already converged close to the real opening price before the stock began trading. Another reference case was Cerebras, where Hyperliquid’s Pre-IPO Perp price at listing differed from the $350 opening price by only about 1.3%.
In this framing, on-chain markets are not limited to helping users take part in IPO subscriptions. They can also form price consensus around unlisted assets and reflect expectations for formal listing prices ahead of time. This function goes beyond the narrower question of whether users can obtain an IPO allocation.
From insufficient bidding to insufficient qualification
The review closes by comparing the SPCX tokenized subscription with ConstitutionDAO. ConstitutionDAO lost because it was outbid. The SpaceX tokenized subscription failed because of trust and qualification, with the on-chain channel unable to enter the room where allocation was decided. The reason for failure shifted from “the bid was not high enough” to “there was no qualification to enter,” which means the problem moved from the execution layer to the structural layer.
The maturity of on-chain infrastructure does not automatically open the off-chain supply side. These are two different developments, and their progress is not synchronized. The article places this mismatch within a broader history of financial infrastructure changes, from the emergence of clearinghouses to electronic trading replacing open outcry. New and old systems have often coexisted for long periods and gone through repeated friction. Traditional finance will not open the allocation gate after one failed tokenized IPO attempt, just as Sotheby’s did not change its auction rules because ConstitutionDAO appeared. But friction leaves traces: it changes user understanding, changes platform capabilities and gradually changes how institutions view crypto channels.
For the article, the most significant part of the event is not only the failed delivery, but the fact that every participating user had already become accustomed to using stablecoins in a wallet to touch an asset that once belonged only to institutions. Once that understanding forms, it is difficult to reverse. When the access structure on the supply side changes, the demand side and the infrastructure side will already have gone through preparation. The value of the review lies in turning a vague failure into a clear problem, because a clear problem can be addressed.