Anthropic pre-IPO perpetuals trade $643M; liquidity test ahead

Anthropic’s tokenized pre-IPO perpetual contracts generated $643 million of trading across 12 crypto venues through Sept. 21, creating a synthetic market that will need to align with any public IPO price once shares begin trading.

September volume surpassed the $590 million recorded in August. Exchange data show about $80 million of Anthropic-linked open interest at the September snapshot. On Binance, open interest in the Anthropic perpetual rose 88% over 30 days to $31.2 million from $16.6 million.

The contracts are cash-settled perpetuals whose prices reflect trading in the crypto market rather than a public equity price. Binance derives a mark price by averaging recent trading in the contract and limiting how far that mark can move from one second to the next. Binance’s rules allow converting a pre-IPO perpetual into an equity-linked contract once a stable third-party stock-price index is available and a transition notice is issued. The exchange moves the mark price gradually toward the stock-linked calculation during the transition, rather than switching instantly when shares begin trading.

If the crypto-implied valuation differs materially from the IPO price, the convergence could change unrealized gains and losses, affect collateral values and push some positions toward liquidation. Combined open interest in Anthropic and OpenAI pre-IPO perpetuals exceeded $160 million as of Sept. 15, up from roughly $1 million in April, according to exchange research.

SpaceX provides a recent precedent. When its shares began trading in June, exchanges kept existing positions and open orders while transitioning mark prices. The adjustment period could last up to three hours depending on volatility and index stability. Open interest in SpaceX perpetuals exceeded $300 million before the IPO and peaked 11 days after listing. Average daily perpetual volume across venues rose to about $2.2 billion in the 30 days following the listing; on one major exchange average daily volume climbed to roughly $1.6 billion from about $89 million before conversion.

Anthropic filed a confidential draft IPO registration in June; some market reports indicate the debut could slip beyond the November U.S. midterm elections. During a weekend when reports suggested a potential delay, the ANTHROPICUSDT perpetual on Binance fell 0.89% to $2,084 from $2,103.

Market participants will watch for an official IPO timetable from Anthropic and for a transition notice from exchanges. After a listing, observers will track the gap between perpetual prices and the listed shares, the speed of convergence and whether pre-IPO open interest persists once the derivative is tied to a public market reference.