Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is rolling out a perpetual futures product for pre-initial public offering (IPO) companies, allowing traders to speculate on a company's valuation before its debut. The first pre-IPO company to be traded on the platform is Elon Musk's aerospace company, SpaceX.
Pre-IPO perps are coming to Coinbase.
Starting today with SpaceX - now live for eligible users outside the US.
It is worth noting that the pre-IPO perp product is not available for users from the United States. The Coinbase blog post explained that more pre-IPO listings will be announced "soon," including companies in technology, AI, energy, and space.
Pre-IPO perps are great to get exposure to private companies before they go public (outside the U.S. only for now) and to help with price discovery.
Perpetual futures, or simply perps, allow traders to speculate on the direction of an asset via a "long" or "short" position, without needing direct exposure to the underlying asset. Unlike traditional futures contracts, perps do not have an expiration date—making them a useful tool to hedge bets across a prolonged period of time.
Coinbase's new product combines this popular trading method with pre-market trading—another common offering in crypto. Often, exchanges offer users the opportunity to speculate on the price of a soon-to-debut crypto token in what's called pre-market trading. However, traders be warned: pre-market prices are often inaccurate and extremely volatile as new information emerges.
