Bitcoin has struggled to recover its momentum after plummeting from $126,000 per bitcoin in October of the previous year, while a lesser-known bitcoin competitor has unexpectedly surged by 1,000% and is being touted as a possible successor to bitcoin. The bitcoin price experienced a significant decline, reaching lows of $60,000 per bitcoin in February, before recovering to approximately $80,000. However, there are concerns that another bitcoin price crash may be imminent. Now, as traders prepare for Michael Saylor’s bitcoin acquisition company Strategy to unveil a significant bitcoin development, Elon Musk has disclosed that his rocket company SpaceX possesses considerably more bitcoin than was previously estimated. SpaceX has officially confirmed its plans to go public by filing an S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This move, which combines xAI and the X platform formerly known as Twitter, sets the stage for an initial public offering potentially as soon as next month. The filing disclosed that SpaceX possesses slightly more than 18,700 bitcoin, valued at approximately $1.3 billion, with an acquisition cost exceeding $660 million, translating to around $35,000 per bitcoin.
The current bitcoin price would place them at $1.4 billion. The company’s bitcoin holdings exceed double the nearly 8,300 bitcoin that blockchain analysts with Arkham had previously associated with SpaceX. An 18,700 bitcoin stash would position SpaceX as the seventh-largest bitcoin holder, surpassing exchange Coinbase, which possesses just under 16,500 bitcoin, as reported. Musk’s Tesla still retains approximately 10,000 bitcoin, representing a portion of its $1.5 billion acquisition in 2021, with the majority divested in 2022. While Musk has distanced himself from actively engaging in bitcoin and crypto discussions in recent years, he continues to express strong criticism of the U.S. dollar, labelling it “hopeless” and asserting that energy is “the true currency”—a statement that some interpret as a nod towards bitcoin. In October, Musk shared on X that “bitcoin is based on energy: you can issue fake fiat currency, and every government in history has done so, but it is impossible to fake energy,” and concurred that the “global arms race” toward artificial intelligence is the reason why gold, silver and bitcoin have all seen their prices soar in recent years.
Bitcoin, secured by a network of miners utilising powerful computers to validate transactions in exchange for newly issued bitcoin, consumes as much electricity annually as some small countries. Its energy demands are increasing in tandem with its price as more miners participate in the network. Musk’s support for bitcoin and crypto has diminished from its peak during the Covid era; however, he has maintained his endorsement of bitcoin, along with his preferred cryptocurrency, dogecoin. However, the SpaceX filing made no mention of the meme-based dogecoin that Musk has championed or ethereum, both identified by Musk as cryptocurrencies he has personally held. SpaceX may be targeting a valuation of as much as $2 trillion, with plans to raise approximately $75 billion. This would mark the largest IPO to date and could signal upcoming public listing intentions from artificial intelligence competitors OpenAI and Anthropic. The filing asserted that the company is positioned to access the “largest actionable total addressable market in human history,” with its quantifiable TAM estimated at $28.5 trillion.
The company disclosed first-quarter revenue of $4.7 billion alongside a net loss of $4.3 billion, highlighting Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet division, as the primary catalyst for profit and growth within the group. Meanwhile, bitcoin and crypto exchange Binance has introduced perpetual futures enabling users to trade on the expected valuations of private companies prior to their shares being publicly available, with SpaceX being the inaugural contract to launch. “Pre-IPO perpetual futures is another illustration of how Binance is broadening access to market opportunities by merging crypto-native infrastructure with significant financial events. As interest in public listings continues to grow, we’re giving users a more flexible way to engage with anticipated IPOs earlier,” Shunyet Jan, head of spot and derivatives business at Binance, said in a press release.