Crypto exchange Bitget has launched IPO Prime, a new product category that lets retail users gain synthetic economic exposure to private unicorn companies before they list on public stock markets. The platform’s debut asset is $preSPAX, a digital token designed to mirror the economic performance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX following a qualifying public listing event.
What Bitget IPO Prime is and how preSPAX works
IPO Prime sits inside Bitget’s broader Universal Exchange (UEX) strategy, which already spans tokenized stocks, ETFs, commodities, forex, and crypto in one platform. The new category extends that mix to pre-IPO exposure, historically restricted to institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals.
The debut asset, $preSPAX, is built on infrastructure provided by Republic, a regulated U.S. investment platform that began issuing tokenized private equity instruments in mid-2025. Under the structure, preSPAX functions as a Contingent Payout Note, a debt instrument that tracks SpaceX’s common stock performance and pays out if a qualifying event occurs, such as an IPO, acquisition, or dissolution of the company.
Critically, the token grants no equity, voting rights, or ownership in SpaceX. Neither Elon Musk nor SpaceX has reviewed, endorsed, authorized, or participated in the product in any capacity. Republic’s RepublicX LLC is the sole issuer and counterparty. If RepublicX defaults, token holders become unsecured creditors. If no qualifying event occurs within ten years of issuance, Republic pays out based on SpaceX’s share price at that maturity date. Investors can lose their entire principal.
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Bitget CEO Gracy Chen described IPO Prime as a way for users to participate earlier in a company’s growth cycle with the added flexibility of continuous trading on the exchange.
Timeline and access tiers
Bitget VIP users get early access through two exclusive airdrop rounds running from April 13 to April 19. The public subscription window opens April 18 at 18:00 UTC and closes April 21 at 18:00 UTC. Allocation sizes are tied to VIP tier levels, with higher tiers receiving larger limits.
The token officially launches April 21 at 12:00 UTC, with distribution to participants between 18:00 and 22:00 UTC the same day. After distribution, $preSPAX moves to Bitget’s over-the-counter (OTC) market for continuous secondary trading. OTC trading means price discovery happens peer-to-peer rather than through a standard order book, an important consideration for buyers and sellers assessing liquidity.
Why the timing is deliberate
The IPO Prime launch lands at a peak moment of SpaceX IPO speculation. SpaceX confidentially filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1, 2026, targeting a June 2026 listing that analysts estimate could raise over $75 billion at a valuation between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. That single development has already moved publicly listed space stocks: Rocket Lab, Intuitive Machines, and AST SpaceMobile all saw pre-market gains in the days following the SpaceX filing news.
On secondary private markets, demand for SpaceX shares has tracked that momentum. As of April 2026, Hiive, a real-time private share marketplace, lists SpaceX shares at approximately $832 per share. That is a significant premium over the $275 reference price at which Republic launched its original rSPAX token rounds in late 2025. Early rSPAX holders have already seen notable indicative gains on paper before SpaceX has publicly listed a single share.
SpaceX reported revenues of $15 billion to $16 billion last year and an $8 billion profit, but still posted a $2.4 billion loss in the first nine months of 2025, reflecting the capital-intensive demands of its Starship rocket program and Starlink satellite network expansion. The IPO, if it proceeds, would be one of the largest in U.S. history.
Republic’s role and track record with SpaceX tokens
Republic is not new to this. The New York-based investment platform launched its first rSPAX Mirror Tokens on Solana in June 2025, making SpaceX exposure available for as little as $50 per token under Regulation Crowdfunding provisions of the 2012 U.S. JOBS Act. That round closed in November 2025 and was oversubscribed. A second rSPAX offering followed shortly after at the same $275 reference price.
Republic has stated plans to expand the model beyond SpaceX to tokenized exposure in other prominent private firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic, companies that are widely expected to go public in the near term. The partnership with Bitget represents a significant distribution upgrade: while Republic’s direct user base is largely U.S.-based retail and accredited investors, Bitget claims 125 million registered users globally.
The risks traders should not overlook
The structure of preSPAX creates several layers of risk that are easy to miss in the excitement around a SpaceX IPO narrative. The most important: you are not buying SpaceX shares. You are buying a debt note from RepublicX LLC that pays based on SpaceX’s performance. If RepublicX fails as a business, your claim is that of an unsecured creditor, not a SpaceX shareholder.
There is also execution risk on the IPO itself. SpaceX has been private for over twenty years. The company could delay its listing, change its structure, or opt for an alternative path like a direct listing or a spin-off of Starlink only. If the qualifying event does not happen within ten years, the maturity payout kicks in based on secondary market pricing at that point, a price that could be higher or lower than what you paid.
After distribution, $preSPAX trades on an OTC market rather than a centralized order book, which means liquidity may be thinner and pricing less transparent than standard crypto assets. The token’s value before any qualifying SpaceX event is driven by sentiment and speculation, not by any direct economic claim on the company.
A broader shift in how exchanges compete
Bitget’s IPO Prime is part of a wider race among crypto exchanges to blur the line between crypto trading and private equity access. By embedding a regulated Republic instrument into its existing UEX product suite, Bitget is positioning itself not just as a crypto exchange but as a full-spectrum investment platform for retail users worldwide.
For crypto traders who have watched SpaceX grow from a scrappy rocket startup into the world’s most valuable private company, now targeting a multi-trillion-dollar public debut, IPO Prime offers the closest thing to a front-row seat that retail investors have ever had. Whether the seat comes with the expected view depends entirely on what SpaceX decides to do next.
