SpaceX's Historic IPO Met a Surprisingly Skeptical Crowd

Hey Hackers! Welcome back to 3 Tech Polls , HackerNoon's Weekly Newsletter that curates results from our Poll of the Week , and 2 related polls around the web. Thank you for having voted in our polls in the past. This week was a big one. SpaceX, the company that's spent over two decades being talked about mostly in terms of rockets, Mars, and Elon Musk's latest tweet, finally went public, and it did so at a valuation that broke the internet. Two trillion dollars puts SpaceX in a tier of companies that includes Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, except SpaceX got there without ever having to answer to public shareholders before now . On top of that, the company disclosed it's sitting on a $1.3 billion Bitcoin reserve , instantly making it the largest non-crypto native public company holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset, bigger than MicroStrategy, bigger than Tesla. The HackerNoon community clearly had opinions. The votes came back split in a way that says a lot about how people feel about this whole moment in the market, and honestly, the split itself might be the most interesting part of the results. Let's get into it. \ :::tip Vote in this week's poll: Which iOS 27 Feature Are You Most Excited About? ::: \ HackerNoon Poll SpaceX just went public at a $2 trillion valuation. What's your move? The poll laid out the situation pretty plainly. SpaceX went public, carrying a $1.3 billion Bitcoin reserve on its balance sheet, 18,712 BTC, which made it the largest non-crypto-specific public company holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset, ahead of both MicroStrategy and Tesla. The question was simple: Does that make you more confident in the stock, or more nervous? 31% said they'd short it, calling the $2 trillion price tag pure delusion. 28% said they're waiting for a post-IPO crash to buy in lower. 20% said they're buying immediately, calling it a once in a generation company. And the last 20% said they're putting in a small position just to say they were there. What jumps out here is that more than half the voters , 59% combined, are betting against the current price in some form, either shorting it outright or waiting for it to come down. That's a notably skeptical crowd for a company as iconic as SpaceX. It tells you the $2 trillion number itself is the sticking point, not the company's mission or its long-term potential. One comment in particular captured that skepticism with a lot of personality: When a company has orders of magnitude higher losses, than it EVER had in profits, you what? Give them even MORE money?!? Welcome to Day of the Dead Capitalism! That comment points out a company can have a world changing product and still be a genuinely risky bet if the valuation has run far ahead of the financials. Whether or not that's a fair read of SpaceX specifically, it's clearly the sentiment driving that 31% who went straight to shorting. On the other side, the 20% buying immediately are leaning into the idea that SpaceX isn't really comparable to a normal company. Starlink, Starship, the Bitcoin reserve, the AI adjacent ventures through the broader Musk ecosystem, all of that adds up to a bet on infrastructure that very few companies on earth could replicate. For that group, the price is almost beside the point. And then there's the 20% just taking a small symbolic position. That's a very relatable way to handle a moment like this. You don't have to be fully convinced either way to want some skin in the game on a listing this historic. \ :::tip Want to weigh in? Share your thoughts on the poll results here . ::: \ 🌐 From Around the Web: Polymarket Pick SpaceX IPO Closing Market Cap Polymarket traders have already moved well past the IPO and are pricing in just how high this thing goes. SpaceX's Nasdaq debut on June 12 under ticker SPCX, priced at $135 per share for a roughly $1.77 trillion valuation , has driven overwhelming trader consensus toward a 2.0 to 2.5 trillion dollar closing market cap. First day demand included over $100 billion in retail orders , with the stock trading rapidly above $160 and posting a nearly 20% intraday gain, reflecting strong sentiment around Starlink's broadband growth, Starship progress, and Musk's AI-adjacent ventures. So while a third of HackerNoon's poll respondents are calling $2 trillion delusional, the actual market has already pushed well past that number on day one. The gap between sentiment in our poll and where the stock actually traded is one of the more interesting parts of this whole story. \ 🌐 From Around the Web: Kalshi Pick How many launches will SpaceX have in June? Whatever you think about the $2 trillion valuation, that number is built on the assumption that SpaceX can keep launching at an absurd pace. Kalshi has a market on exactly that, and it gives a good gut check on whether the operation behind the stock is actually living up to the hype. The market asks how many launches SpaceX will complete in June 2026. As of now, traders put the odds of SpaceX clearing more than 13 launches in the month at 83%, with the "above 12" threshold sitting even higher at 95%. The "above 14" outcome is priced much lower, around 6%, suggesting the crowd thinks SpaceX lands somewhere in the 13 to 14 range for the month rather than blowing past it. For context on just how wild that pace already is, SpaceX has conducted 73 Falcon family vehicle launches in 2026 as of June 21, and company president Gwynne Shotwell has said she expects somewhere around 140 to 145 Falcon 9 launches for the year. A $2 trillion valuation only makes sense if SpaceX keeps executing at this cadence month after month. The Kalshi market shows traders are fairly confident it will, but the fact that "above 14" odds drop off sharply is a reminder that even SpaceX has a ceiling on how fast it can fly. If you're in the camp that voted to buy immediately, this is the kind of operational data worth tracking alongside the stock price itself. \ :::tip Stay informed on our most recent polling data. Subscribe to 3 Tech Polls here . ::: \ That's it for this week. Until next time, Hackers!