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title: The $240 Billion Question: Can RWAs Keep Crypto Liquidity in the markets?
author: Alex Voss
date: 2026-06-10
category: Finance
excerpt: SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are set to absorb over $240 billion in retail capital. RWAs might be the only structure that can keep that money inside crypto.
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SpaceX filed its IPO on June 11. The target is $135 per share with a $75 billion raise and roughly 30 percent of shares reserved for retail investors. OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to follow before year-end. Combined, the three listings are projected to absorb more than $240 billion in capital.

That capital has to come from somewhere. The most liquid pool of retail risk capital in the market right now is crypto.

Spencer Hallarn, GSRS Global Head of OTC Trading, said it plainly in Reuters: “Crypto is a funding currency for a lot of this. We have got to find $75 billion for this IPO, and it has got to come from somewhere.” Binance Square noted that $240 billion exceeds 60 percent of the total global stablecoin market cap.

The mechanism is simple. A BNP Paribas note projected up to $50 billion in retail liquidations across crypto, semiconductors, and borrowingd ETFs just to fund the SpaceX allocation alone. When a new faucet opens at $75 billion, the pressure everywhere else drops.

This is where the RWA conversation gets interesting. Real World Assets are usually discussed as an onboarding mechanism bringing traditional capital into crypto. But the current flow is going the other direction. Capital is leaving crypto to chase the AI and space IPOs. The question is whether RWA structures can reverse that vector.

Tokenized treasuries and yield-bearing stablecoins offer something the mega-IPOs cannot: continuous liquidity with no lock-up period. The SpaceX IPO comes with a standard lock-up. The crypto markets settle in seconds. An investor who puts capital into a treasury-backed token can exit in the same minute they entered. That flexibility has a price in yield, but it matters when market conditions shift.

There is a second function RWAs serve here that gets less attention. When stablecoin holders start redeeming to participate in IPOs, the stablecoin supply contracts. That puts upward pressure on yields across DeFi lending markets. Higher yields attract capital back. The question is whether the yield premium is enough to compete with a SpaceX allocation at $135 per share.

The bear case is straightforward. Retail investors have a limited pool of risk capital. A SpaceX IPO that creates 4,000 new millionaires is a powerful narrative. AI companies are running the same play. If crypto cannot offer a comparable story, the capital rotation continues.

The bull case for RWAs is that they do not need to compete with the IPO narrative directly. They need to offer a parking spot for capital that wants optionality. An investor can sell their Bitcoin position, park the proceeds in a treasury-backed token earning 4-5 percent, and wait for the IPO frenzy to settle. That capital stays within the crypto markets. It remains deployable. It gives its owner the ability to move back in when the rotation reverses.

Whether that is an equilibrium or a last gasp depends on the same variable it always does. Which story wins.