Hyperliquid Emerges As 'Superior' Alternative After SpaceX IPO Lockup Chaos

Grayscale pointed out that the first-ever S&P 500 perpetual futures product launched on Hyperliquid in March 2026 through a license from S&P Dow Jones Indices.

• Crypto investor Simon Dedic said this weekend's SpaceX Nasdaq debut exposed problems with centralized tokenized-stock access.
• Dedic said the episode makes Hyperliquid's onchain perpetual futures look like the "superior vehicle" for trading exposure to companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
• A Grayscale research note said Hyperliquid's HIP-3 perpetual markets hit a peak open interest of $3.2 billion in June 2026.

Crypto investor and Co-founder of Moon Rock Capital, Simon Dedic, said on Saturday that the access issues retail traders faced around SpaceX's (SPCX) Nasdaq debut make the case for trading exposure to high-profile private companies via onchain perpetual futures on Hyperliquid (HYPE) over centralized exchanges.

"Yesterday's SpaceX IPO was another masterclass lesson why you should never trust the middlemen in crypto," Dedic wrote in a post on X on Saturday. 

Dedic said Bybit (MNT), Binance (BNB), and Bitget (BGB) all cancelled their tokenized SpaceX allocations, citing a "share shortage," leaving traders who sought exposure through a centralized exchange "empty-handed despite all the big promises."

He also said that SpaceX token holders issued through preStocks faced an undisclosed 180-day lockup that gave them the choice of either selling at a discount immediately or waiting six months until the lockup ended. "Same trick every single time," Dedic wrote. "The intermediaries promise you access, take their cut, and hand you something completely different from what you signed up for."

Dedic said similar issues could crop up elsewhere in this IPO cycle, citing companies like Anthropic (ANTHZZX) and OpenAI (OPEAZZX), where investors could be exposed through layered special purpose vehicles without fully understanding the terms.

Perpetuals As The 'Superior Vehicle'

The episode solidifies the case for trading economic exposure to such companies via perpetual futures over custodial tokenized-stock products, Dedic said.

"For now, this actually makes perps look like the superior vehicle," he wrote. "If all you want is economic exposure to these names, why deal with custody games and hidden lockups when you can just trade it 24/7 onchain?" "Bullish Hyperliquid, as always, I guess," he added.

Dedic said the longer-term fix is regulatory. "The only thing missing is regulatory clarity," he wrote, adding that the CLARITY Act would be "the single biggest catalyst this industry has ever had" once passed.

Hyperliquid's Tokenized Markets Show Rapid Growth

Separately, a research note published by Grayscale on Friday outlined the growth of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework, launched in October 2025, which allowed permissionless deployment of perpetual futures markets for equities, commodities, indices, and pre-IPO stocks.

Markets in HIP-3 hit a high of $3.2 billion in open interest in June 2026, and have traded $200 billion since launch, according to Grayscale.

The note said the first S&P 500 (SPY) perpetual futures product was launched on Hyperliquid in March 2026, after S&P Dow Jones Indices licensed the index to a HIP-3 deployer.

Hyperliquid's role was compared to cloud infrastructure by Grayscale. “Hyperliquid platform is more like Amazon Web Services than a stock exchange,” the firm said, adding that open infrastructure that allows developers to "create the products, with the HYPE token capturing value from every trade it hosts.”

HYPE’s price was trading at $60, flat over the past 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around HYPE remained in the ‘neutral’ zone over the past day, with chatter at ‘low’ levels. 

HYPE’s price has been up over 137% so far this year.

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