The SpaceX IPO described by OdailyDepth author jk became a sharp contrast between traditional finance and the crypto industry’s attempt to open IPO access through tokenization. On June 12, 2026, SpaceX listed on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX at an offering price of $135 per share. The company raised $75 billion, setting a record for IPO fundraising. After trading opened, SPCX at one point rose above $170, more than 25% higher than the offering price.
On the same day, however, the crypto industry’s large-scale experiment in giving retail users IPO access through a tokenized framework ran into trouble. Bybit, Binance and Bitget Wallet announced cancellations and full refunds. Kraken, which many users had regarded as the most reliable option because of its connection to the underlying infrastructure, also disappointed the community: user feedback indicated that successful subscribers, regardless of how much they committed, mostly received only about 4.2786 SPCXx tokens.
xStocks was the central infrastructure for tokenized access
The key infrastructure in the event was xStocks, a tokenized equity framework issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited, a company under Payward Services, Kraken’s parent company. The design goal of xStocks is for each token to correspond 1:1 with a real underlying share, with the actual shares held in custody by a regulated broker.
Kraken was the first to launch SpaceX IPO Access on June 5. The token code was SPCXx, and the product was opened to verified users in more than 110 regions. Bybit followed on June 7 with its IPO Express product and selected the SpaceX offering as the first asset for the product. Bybit used an indicative price of 135 USDC, charged an additional 5% underwriting fee, set a minimum subscription of 100 USDC per user, and allowed up to 50 subscription orders per user.
Binance then introduced its SPCXx subscription under the name of its first IPO Campaign. Bitget Wallet also launched a similar product through the xStocks framework on Solana. Its initial quota was $3 million, then expanded quickly to $13 million because of strong demand, and the product was oversubscribed by four times within 30 minutes. When SpaceX formally listed on Nasdaq on June 12, it raised $75 billion and carried an implied valuation of $1.75 trillion.
Insufficient allocation led to cancellations and refunds
The core problem emerged on listing day. The actual underlying share allocation that xStocks obtained from the underwriters was far below expectations, leaving it unable to deliver enough shares to the platforms according to user demand. Bitget said on X: “The xStocks team did everything possible to secure allocation, but ultimately it was not implemented as expected.”
Bybit also confirmed on X that because xStocks could not deliver the underlying assets, Bybit did not receive any SpaceX share allocation. All subscription funds would be automatically refunded 100% to users’ original accounts, and eligible participants would receive compensation rewards at an annualized rate of about 10%. Binance, Bitget and Bybit then announced cancellations, full refunds, and additional compensation for affected users.
On-chain data showed the scale of demand on Binance. Within 28 hours after the SPCXx subscription opened, it attracted about $557 million in USDC subscription commitments from 27,689 wallet addresses. More than 81% of addresses made a single subscription of no more than $20,000, while 114 addresses each staked at least $500,000. After cancelling the activity, Binance said it would fully return 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 symbolic allocation
Kraken, the exchange associated with xStocks, produced an outcome that users also found frustrating. Community feedback showed that successful Kraken subscribers received a fixed allocation of 4.2786 SPCXx tokens regardless of the amount they invested. Based on the $135 offering price, that was worth about $578 to $606, with the rest of the funds refunded. Kraken had not officially confirmed that exact number in the source article.
Some users in mainland China who received an allocation said the app page showed that they could not trade the SpaceX share units because of regional restrictions. In other words, even 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 that allocations can be made on a pro rata, random, tiered or relationship-based basis. In a high-demand environment, partial allocation or even zero allocation is a normal result.
After the event spread, many Chinese-language users posted screenshots and complaints on X, formerly Twitter. Kraken user @joeylu0627 described the experience in detail: after investing 200,000 U, the user received 4.2786 shares of SPCX, worth about $700, while the rest was refunded. The user wrote that it was fortunate not to lose money, but the large capital only earned a small amount. Another user, @jijioulei33190, wrote more sharply that whether someone subscribed with 1,000 U or 100,000 U, everyone received 4.2 SpaceX shares, and complained that Chinese-region users received the stock but could not trade it, only buy and not sell.
An overseas user, @MengLayer, also known as Chen Xiaomeng, posted a screenshot showing SPCXx being swapped back into USDC on Kraken Pro. The caption said: “1 million to subscribe, made 60 U, I am really awesome.” The user also quoted another complaint: “If it rises, they refund you; if it falls, they give it to you.” Some users further speculated that the allocation may have been withheld privately after the value of the shares rose.
Gate.io users received shares as the upstream allocation issue became clear
Not every crypto platform ended the episode only with refunds. In the generally unsuccessful wave of tokenized IPO access, a small number of platform users did receive shares and realized gains. Gate.io also had actual allocation. User @px521com2 posted a detailed subscription record: Gate subscription of $5,786, refund of $5,557, sale proceeds of $268, and profit of $39. Together with the Kraken portion, the user said the total net gain for the day was $127. Compared with Kraken’s fixed “4.2 shares per person” allocation, Gate’s proportional distribution mechanism gave some users a more flexible actual return.
Kraken emphasized that the shortage of allocation came from the underwriters’ allocation decision, not from a platform technology or operational problem. In other words, the issue was not whether the tokens could be issued, settled or displayed on-chain. The core problem was that crypto platforms did not truly control the upstream resources in IPO placement.
SpaceX issued about 555.6 million shares at $135 per share, raising about $75 billion and setting a global IPO fundraising record. Under intense retail subscription demand, the demand aggregated by crypto platforms far exceeded the allocation they could obtain from the traditional underwriting system. In this SpaceX IPO, most crypto retail users ultimately did not get a real seat at the table. The first large-scale trial of “on-chain IPO” showed that while the demand side was already present, the supply side remained in the hands of traditional finance. Without access to allocation sources, underwriting relationships and asset delivery capacity, a smooth on-chain entry point cannot change ordinary retail investors’ position in the IPO allocation chain.