Odaily author jk described a sharp contrast between SpaceX’s public-market debut and the crypto platforms that tried to route retail users into the IPO through tokenized stock products. On June 12, 2026, SpaceX listed on Nasdaq at an offering price of $135 per share under the ticker SPCX. The company raised $75 billion, setting an IPO fundraising record, and its shares briefly traded above $170 after the open, more than 25% above the issue price.
xStocks was the key infrastructure behind the campaign
The failed access channel centered on xStocks, a tokenized equity framework issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited under Payward Services, the parent company of Kraken. xStocks tokens are designed to correspond 1:1 with underlying real shares, with the actual shares held in custody by a regulated broker.
Kraken was the first major platform in the sequence, launching SpaceX IPO Access on June 5 with the token code SPCXx. The product was made available to verified users in more than 110 regions. Bybit followed on June 7 with its IPO Express product, choosing the SpaceX deal as its first listed target. Bybit used an indicative price of 135 USDC, added a 5% underwriting fee, set a minimum subscription of 100 USDC per user, and allowed up to 50 subscription orders per user.
Binance then introduced SPCXx under the name of its first IPO Campaign. Bitget Wallet launched a similar product through the xStocks framework on Solana. Its initial quota was $3 million, but strong demand pushed the platform to expand that amount to $13 million, and the product was oversubscribed four times within 30 minutes.
Refunds followed after allocations proved insufficient
After SpaceX formally listed, crypto platforms began issuing notices that xStocks had obtained far fewer underlying shares from the underwriters than expected and could not deliver enough shares to meet platform demand. Bitget wrote on X that the xStocks team had made every effort to secure allocation, but the final allocation was not implemented as expected.
Bybit also confirmed on X that it did not receive any SpaceX share allocation because xStocks could not deliver the underlying assets. The platform said all subscription funds would be automatically returned 100% to users’ original accounts, and eligible participants would receive compensation rewards at an annualized rate of about 10%.
Binance, Bitget and Bybit all moved to cancel their activities and provide full refunds, while also promising additional compensation to affected users. On-chain data showed that Binance’s SPCXx subscription campaign attracted about $557 million in USDC subscription commitments from 27,689 wallet addresses within 28 hours of opening. More than 81% of addresses subscribed no more than $20,000 in a single order, while 114 addresses each staked at least $500,000. After cancelling the campaign, Binance said it would fully refund the locked USDC and airdrop $1 million worth of bStocks SpaceX tokens, SPCXB, to all participating users, with delivery expected before June 18.
Kraken users reported a near-fixed 4.2786 SPCXx allocation
Kraken, the exchange associated with xStocks, also disappointed many users. Community feedback showed that users who successfully subscribed on Kraken largely received the same allocation regardless of how much they invested: 4.2786 SPCXx tokens. At the $135 offering price, that amount was equivalent to roughly $578 to $606, with all remaining funds refunded. Kraken has not officially confirmed that specific figure.
Some mainland Chinese users who received allocations said the app page showed that SpaceX share units could not be traded because of regional restrictions. In practical terms, the roughly four shares obtained through the subscription were not necessarily sellable for those users. Kraken explained on its support page that IPO allocation rights belong to the underwriters and can be distributed proportionally, randomly, by tiers, or based on relationships. The platform said partial or even zero allocation is a normal outcome in a high-demand environment.
The incident quickly led to screenshots and complaints across the Chinese-speaking community on X. Kraken user @joeylu0627 wrote that he invested 200,000 U but ultimately received 4.2786 shares of SPCX, worth about $700, with the rest returned. He said he was fortunate not to lose money, but that using a large amount of capital only earned a tiny return. User @jijioulei33190 was more direct, saying that whether users put in 1,000 U or 100,000 U, they all received 4.2 SpaceX shares, and complained that Chinese-region users who got shares could only buy but could not sell.
Gate.io users showed actual allocations and small profits
Overseas user @MengLayer, also known as 陈小萌, posted a screenshot showing SPCXx converted back into USDC on Kraken Pro. The post read: 1 million for the new listing, earned 60 U, I am really impressive. He also quoted another user’s complaint: if it goes up, they refund you; if it goes down, they give it to you. Some users also questioned whether allocations had been privately withheld after the shares rose in value.
Not every crypto platform ended only with refunds. Gate.io users also received actual allocations. User @px521com2 posted a detailed subscription record: Gate subscription of $5,786, refund of $5,557, sale proceeds of $268, and profit of $39. Including the Kraken portion, the user said the day’s total net profit was $127. Compared with Kraken’s roughly 4.2-share fixed allocation per user, Gate’s proportional allocation mechanism gave some users more room for actual returns.
Kraken emphasized that the allocation shortage came from the underwriters’ allocation decisions, not from a technical or operational problem on the platform. In other words, the issue was not whether tokenized shares could be issued, settled, or displayed on-chain; it was that crypto platforms did not truly control the upstream resources in the IPO placement process. SpaceX issued about 555.6 million shares at $135 per share, raised about $75 billion, and reached an implied valuation of $1.75 trillion. Retail demand aggregated by crypto platforms exceeded the allocation they were able to secure from the traditional underwriting system, leaving most crypto retail participants outside the main SpaceX IPO allocation table.