SpaceX futures open interest surges 966% in 19 days as tokenized stocks expand to pre-IPO market

SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, is rapidly expanding liquidity in the pre-IPO perpetual futures market. As tokenized stocks move beyond commodities and blue-chip equities into pre-IPO territory, they have recorded the second-highest growth rate among real-world asset (RWA) product categories.

According to Binance on Wednesday, open interest in SpaceX futures (SPCXUSDT) stood at $73.28 million on May 22, when trading first launched, but surged 966% to $781.09 million as of Wednesday — a gain achieved in just 19 days. Open interest refers to the total number of outstanding contracts that have not yet been settled. It is considered a key indicator of investor sentiment and liquidity in futures markets, reflecting the scale of bets placed on price increases (long) and decreases (short). Capital is concentrating rapidly around predictions of SpaceX's future share price.

Tokenized stocks account for less than 5% of the total RWA market by capitalization. According to RWA analytics platform RWA.xyz on Wednesday, tokenized stocks represented 4.73% — or $1.46644 billion — of the total RWA market cap of $31.023 billion. US Treasuries held the largest share at 47.68%, or $14.7904 billion.

The growth rate, however, stands out. The market cap of tokenized stocks reached $1.46644 billion as of June 8, up 115% from the start of the year, when it stood at $682.975 million. That is 2.8 times the 42% growth rate of the overall RWA market cap over the same period, which rose from $2.18087 billion to $3.10229 billion. Among 12 RWA product categories — including US Treasuries, commodities, asset-backed securities, specialty finance and real estate — tokenized stocks posted the steepest growth after venture capital, which surged 282% from $271.41 million to $1.0371 billion.

Futures products have been the main driver of the tokenized stock market. Taking advantage of the absence of an established global regulatory framework, third parties have been packaging listed company shares into tradable products — without the companies' consent — and trading them around the clock on price-prediction markets. Particularly dominant are perpetual futures, which allow up to 20x leverage on stocks that investors in their home countries could not previously buy on domestic exchanges; these contracts account for an overwhelming 99% of open interest. Perpetual futures primarily use stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) as collateral, though other assets including Ethereum have recently been permitted as margin.

According to Coinglass, the total open interest across 133 tokenized stocks traded in futures markets continued to grow, reaching $7.37346 billion (approximately 11.236 trillion won) as of Tuesday. Gold had the largest open interest of any single product, accounting for 44% of the total at $3.25 billion, followed by the S&P 500 at 10.16% ($749.06 million) and silver at 9.83% ($724.55 million). The top three products together still account for more than half the total. Among Korean stocks, Hyundai Motor had open interest of $2.05 million (0.03%), SK Hynix $1.51 million (0.02%) and Samsung Electronics $879,000 (0.01%) — the three combined representing less than 1% of the total.

"An environment is emerging where stocks can be packaged into products and traded with high leverage around the clock on platforms, without the listed company's consent," said Yoon Seung-sik, head of research at Tiger Research. "These are price-tracking products with no underlying spot asset and limited trading liquidity, so sharp price swings are common — investors should exercise caution."

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