In June 2026, the Nasdaq's order book was tightened by SpaceX: this globally renowned private aerospace company was preparing for a record-breaking IPO, targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion, an offering price of about $135 per share. It is said that subscriptions have already been significantly oversubscribed, and underwriters plan to close the last subscription window after the Wednesday market close. The fervor for funds and the voice of skepticism are simultaneously amplifying—while the market consolidates the imagination surrounding reusable rockets, Starlink, and AI into exorbitant premiums, it also begins to question whether such a story is worth such an expensive bet. Steve Eisman, the prototype investor from "The Big Short," has chosen to stand on the opposite side of the optimistic sentiment, publicly expressing his caution regarding this IPO, worrying about SpaceX's rapidly expanding capital expenditures and heavy betting on AI business, although he does not intend to short the stock directly on the first day of trading, he does clearly reserve his stance on the current valuation. More dramatically, the reversal of account numbers: the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) invested about $220 million in 2019; if calculated based on a $1.75 trillion IPO valuation, its holdings could have inflated to about $11.6 billion, while its bet on the cryptocurrency exchange FTX has already been marked down to zero, becoming a typical example of the drastically different outcomes when institutions bet on cutting-edge technology versus cryptocurrency assets. At the same time that the space narrative ignites global risk appetite, Europe across the Atlantic is reshaping risk boundaries with a different logic—the EU's MiCA framework places high legal and auditing compliance costs on crypto service providers, leading Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet to criticize that this is stifling local Web3 innovation in Europe, while unexpectedly building a moat for traditional financial institutions that can better absorb costs, raising the sharpest market divide of whether "capital should flow into SpaceX-style high-valued tech bets, or be locked into a new order of compliance barriers by regulatory frameworks."
Oversubscribed: The Carnival Scene of a $1.75 Trillion Valuation
While European crypto is pressed against compliance gate by MiCA, funds on Wall Street are queuing up to rush towards a more "weightless" story. In June 2026, one of the most sought-after private companies, SpaceX, was preparing to complete what is regarded as a "record-breaking" IPO on Nasdaq: targeting a valuation of about $1.75 trillion, an offering price of about $135 per share. According to public reports, the subscription for this issuance has significantly exceeded expectations, with the subscription window expected to hurriedly close after the U.S. market close on Wednesday. For most traditional aerospace giants, this valuation is not just a "lead," but directly elevates the entire old industry to serve as its comparative backdrop.
Supporting this fervor is the combined force of three intertwined narratives: reusable rockets are seen as a cost revolution in the launch market, Starlink is regarded as a global "orbital network infrastructure," and further afield, outsiders begin to price this $1.75 trillion based on a long-term technological vision of "the combination of Starlink and AI." Capital is pricing into today's value visible rocket launch orders, the expanding Starlink network, and the still-evolving AI narrative—all bundled under the label of a record IPO—bringing into question whether this is a reasonable price to prepay for growth over the next few decades, or if excessive subscriptions are inflating a yet-to-materialize bubble, which remains the most challenging and critical suspense surrounding the SpaceX IPO.
Steve Eisman Douses Cold Water: Concerns Under High Investment
Amid the frenzy surrounding SpaceX, the most notable dissenting voice comes from the one who once bet that "the American housing market would inevitably collapse." Steve Eisman, who became famous for shorting the U.S. housing market during the subprime crisis, is one of the prototypes for a character in the movie "The Big Short." His experience has made him regarded as one of the few pessimists with positive track records in "identifying structural risks behind optimistic narratives." Now that the market debates whether SpaceX's target valuation of $1.75 trillion is an expensive "reasonably valued" figure or another collective illusion driven by stories, Eisman's response in the media is restrained and calm, advising to "keep distance."
He has not adopted the aggressive tactics of his earlier days—Eisman has made it clear that he will not immediately short SpaceX during the IPO, but he does not hide his reservations regarding its fundamentals and valuation: in his view, SpaceX's capital expenditures are already substantial and continue to expand rapidly, with the company making a heavy bet on its AI business on that basis. This combination of "high investment plus new stories" causes him to doubt whether future cash flows can match today's prices. Rather than outright denying SpaceX, he questions the pricing method that discounts decades of growth all at once into the offering price—on this point, he stands alongside those institutions and professional investors who are repeatedly recalculating and discussing whether SpaceX's high valuation has already overdrawn years of growth expectations, aligning with a more cautious stance.
From Zero in FTX to Billions in Gains: OTPP's Contrasting Experiences
For Ontario teachers, OTPP often symbolizes stability and restraint, but the targets it bets on are anything but conservative. In 2019, OTPP wrote a check for about $220 million for the then-unlisted SpaceX, which at the time was more interpreted as a long-term bet on reusable rockets, the Starlink network, and the broader narrative of space. Years later, as the market prices SpaceX at a $1.75 trillion IPO valuation, this early holding has been roughly calculated by the media to have a market value of about $11.6 billion, with such an increase from cost to market value placing this pension fund at the potential pinnacle of a $10 billion unrealized gain amidst the SpaceX frenzy.
However, in the crypto world, OTPP plays a very different role. Its investment in the FTX exchange was ultimately marked down to zero during the collapsing and bankruptcy chain, alongside a string of institutions that were written into the textbook of "systemic risks in crypto assets." In the same investment committee, one side sees the amplified returns of cutting-edge tech companies like SpaceX under the traditional equity framework, while the other side encounters the embarrassing pitfall of FTX's collapse—a stark juxtaposition of extreme outcomes that is almost blinding. In hindsight, SpaceX and FTX are highly overlapping in keywords like "cutting-edge," "high growth," and "disrupting the old order," yet fundamentally different in regulatory status, cash flow visibility, and governance structures. It becomes challenging to craft a formula that can precisely differentiate their fates in OTPP's decision documents of the time, which is also the most realistic dilemma institutions face in risk management and asset allocation between space technology and crypto assets today.
MiCA's High Threshold: European Web3 Entrepreneurs Blocked from Entry
After stories like FTX push "unregulated risks" to the extreme, Brussels' response is to create a rulebook as comprehensive and unified as possible. The "Market in Crypto-Assets Regulation" (MiCA) is written as the first global regulatory framework covering crypto assets comprehensively, with a simple goal: to standardize regulatory benchmarks across member states, ensuring that crypto businesses from Paris to Berlin adhere to the same set of rules, while using clearer boundary of responsibilities and disclosure requirements to tell institutions like OTPP—at least in Europe, investor protection and market stability will have institutional backing.
However, those truly set to work on this new land see a different picture. MiCA sets minimum capital thresholds based on different business types, with compliance itself meaning continuous legal, audit, and process restructuring expenditures. Ledger's CTO Charles Guillemet has publicly warned that such a cost structure is stifling Europe's Web3 innovation: small crypto startups, before they have even spent their seed funding, must reserve a large budget for licenses, internal controls, and audits, while larger traditional financial institutions and leading tech companies can more easily mobilize capital and teams to “find the maps.” On a textual level, MiCA writes about protecting investors; on an industrial level, it objectively constructs a regulatory "moat" for those already holding resource and licensing experience, making local early projects seem to serve more as benchmarks for their competitors in other jurisdictions, thereby risking the gradual erosion of Europe's innovative soil.
Capital Floods into Space Giants While Regulation Tightens in Crypto: Who Will Win in the Next Round?
As global funds queue up to grab stakes ahead of the SpaceX IPO, pursuing a company regarded as "one of the most important technological and aerospace assets of our time," European Web3 entrepreneurs are repeatedly weighing their survival space under the terms of MiCA—on one side, there is oversubscription, valuation pushed to about $1.75 trillion, and the long-term capital narrative of Starlink and AI; on the other side, there are minimum capital thresholds and dauntingly high legal and audit costs, leading leading players like Ledger to openly remind that small teams aiming to start crypto businesses in Europe will first have to endure a round of compliance “trekking.” This is not merely a difference in industry warmth, but a preference for assets shaped by regulatory and narrative: in an environment of abundant liquidity and concurrent risk aversion, capital is more willing to pay premiums for long-term narratives supported by high barriers, heavy assets, engineering, and state strategy, rather than betting on a crypto world that is still being rewritten in terms of regulations, business models, and licensing forms.
The contrasting gains and losses showcased by OTPP provide a highly symbolic entry for this preference: the approximately $220 million invested in SpaceX in 2019 is now calculated to have a potential market value of about $11.6 billion under the IPO target valuation; while the hand that reached out to FTX has been marked to zero on the balance sheet. This experience of "big gains in long-term cutting-edge tech and total losses in aggressive crypto" will dominate many institutions' internal debates in the coming years: whether the European crypto licenses under compliance constraints should be operated by the already adept large banks and major tech companies in coping with regulations; whether funds truly willing to take risks will allocate more of their risk budgets to SpaceX-type heavy tech companies, or rather shift towards other markets that are friendlier to crypto and new finance. Eisman stands on the other side reminding that SpaceX's high capital expenditures and heavy bets on AI may equally bury hazards. This cautious voice from "the shorting generation" will not extinguish the IPO's heat but will force the next round of funds to redefine boundaries among "betting on space giants," "jogging in constrained crypto," and "searching for a more lenient regulatory environment." Ultimately, who can simultaneously safeguard risk and imagination across these three paths will determine the true winner of the next decade.
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