by Coinstrooper Crypto Articles
Quick Take
  • SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq under the SPCX ticker on June 12 after raising $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion implied valuation.
  • Exchanges offering tokenized access have started refunding unfilled orders.
  • The Kraken growth team said the pre-IPO allocation received from underwriters fell below expectations for its tokenized SpaceX IPO access program.
  • User demand significantly exceeded supply, so the exchange could only partially fill orders.

What Happened

Kraken acquired Backed in December 2025 as part of its tokenized equities expansion, and says the framework passed $25 billion in volume across more than 100 tokenized stocks by March.

SpaceX was the debut listing for both programs. Kraken launched IPO Access with it, and Binance Wallet made it the first project under its IPO Campaign.

Market Context

SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq under the SPCX ticker on June 12 after raising $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion implied valuation. Exchanges offering tokenized access have started refunding unfilled orders.

That equals roughly $578 at the $135 offering price, whether users committed $5,000 or $50,000. Kraken has not confirmed the figure.

Participation also carried costs. Kraken applied a 5% spread to the final price at allocation, while Binance passed on a 5% underwriting fee above the 135 USDC indicative price.

Why It Matters

The Kraken growth team said the pre-IPO allocation received from underwriters fell below expectations for its tokenized SpaceX IPO access program.

User demand significantly exceeded supply, so the exchange could only partially fill orders. Every unfilled portion will be refunded.

“The xStocks team made every effort to secure the allocation, but it ultimately wasn’t available as expected,” Bitget also said on X.

Kraken stresses that underwriters decide how shares are distributed. Allocations may be pro-rata, random, tiered, or relationship-based, and high demand can produce partial or zero fills.

Details

Binance, Bybit and Kraken users received only a fraction of the SPCX shares they subscribed for, as the SpaceX IPO allocation handed to crypto platforms came in far below demand.

SpaceX IPO Allocation Comes in Below Demand

Community feedback indicates that successful Kraken subscribers all received an identical 4.2786 SPCXx.

Binance Wallet faced the same squeeze at larger scale. Its SPCXx campaign drew roughly $557 million in USDC from 27,689 addresses in 28 hours, according to on-chain data tracked on Dune.

More than 81% of wallets committed $20,000 or less, while 114 addresses pledged at least $500,000 each.

“Due to circumstances outside of our control, we are unable to proceed with this campaign,” Binance said.

Bybit fared worse. The exchange said in an X (Twitter) post that it received no allocation at all and refunded subscribers in full.

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Against this backdrops, Binance, Bitget, and Bybit said they would be cancelling the campaign and issue full refunds. There would also be additional compensation for affected users.

“Protect users when things don’t go as planned,” Binance founder CZ wrote.

Underwriters, Not Exchanges, Made the Call

The squeeze was predictable in scale. SpaceX sold 555.6 million shares at $135 each, setting a record for IPO proceeds.

Crypto platforms had spent weeks pricing SpaceX before listing through perpetuals and synthetic products.

The affected platforms all route through xStocks, the tokenized equities framework issued by Backed Assets.

Distribution scale, however, bought no leverage with underwriters.