Some online chatter seems to speculate that retail investors may be selling cryptocurrencies to chase the biggest IPO in history.
Elon Musk-owned rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company SpaceX is selling up to 30% of its record $75 billion offering directly to retail investors through Robinhood, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, more than three times the portion a typical initial public offering reserves for individuals.
Thursday’s inaugural tour was already oversubscribed, with more orders than shares on offer, Bloomberg reported. It offers shares at a valuation of $1.8 trillion.
Bitcoin fell about 16% over the same time period and briefly traded below $60,000 before recovering to around $61,000, according to data from CoinDesk.
Stablecoins are the most direct way to track money being converted into cryptocurrency for dollars. A trader who collects bitcoin to fund a brokerage account converts it into a dollar-pegged token, such as USDC or tether, and then redeems it for cash. This manifests itself in two ways: when stablecoins cashed in on exchanges, and later as a dwindling supply as issuers burn redeemed tokens.
None of these readings show anomalies, according to data evaluated by CoinDesk. USDC and Tether outflows remained within the range they have held since February, according to data from CryptoQuant. The biggest single days in recent months were $2.5 billion in USDC on May 22 and $3.6 billion in Tether on May 20, both before the sell-off.
Bitcoin and ether saw large withdrawals on Friday, with 66,470 bitcoins and around 2.49 million ether leaving exchanges, among the largest single-day totals of the year according to CryptoQuant data.
An exit is coins leaving an exchange into a private wallet, which is what a buyer does after taking delivery. The sale does the opposite: the coins go to the exchanges to be sold.
However, on-chain data has a blind spot. You can’t see inside a Robinhood or Coinbase account, where someone can sell bitcoins for dollars without ever touching a public blockchain.
Whether cryptocurrency holders funded their allocations will not be answered until brokerages release their own numbers. Robinhood reports monthly trading metrics, June cryptocurrency volumes will be released in mid-July, and Coinbase breaks down retail activity in its second-quarter results later in the month.
Bitcoin and ether saw large withdrawals on Friday, with 66,470 bitcoins and around 2.49 million ether leaving exchanges, among the largest single-day totals of the year according to CryptoQuant data.
An exit is coins leaving an exchange into a private wallet, which is what a buyer does after taking delivery. The sale does the opposite: the coins go to the exchanges to be sold. The biggest flows of the week look like withdrawals and purchases on dips, not a fight for cash.
The only place where money was clearly taken from cryptocurrencies was funds.
Spot bitcoin ETFs, exchange-traded products that hold bitcoin directly, bled for 13 consecutive sessions through June 3, a record stretch valued at around $4.4 billion before a small inflow of $3 million broke the streak.
Ether ETFs had a longer streak of 17 sessions that ended on the same day. When investors withdraw money from these funds, the issuer sells the underlying coins, so the redemptions are actual sales.
SpaceX listed on June 11 and listed on the Nasdaq under the symbol SPCX the next day.
