The Perpification of pre-IPOs

Coin Metrics State of the Network is an unbiased, weekly view of the crypto market informed by our own network (on-chain) and market data.

Key Takeaways

• The long-awaited Anthropic IPO has driven traders to speculate on its valuation through pre-IPO perpetual (IPOP) futures markets. Across exchanges, traders anticipate a company valuation of ~$2.1T after going public.
• Entropy, an HIP-3 builder, supports over $10M of daily volume on average over the past two weeks and $30M of open interest on its Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual futures market. This is the most open interest by an exchange offering exposure to Anthropic pre-IPO valuation.
• The lack of an Anthropic spot market provides a unique opportunity where some exchanges charge no funding rate while others do based on the deviation from oracle price. This creates different incentives to trade Anthropic perps on different exchanges.

Introduction

Anthropic is one of the most anticipated IPOs in 2026 as traders speculate a valuation of over $2.1T. Exposure to private company performance and valuations has historically been limited to qualified investors and institutional capital. Most investors only trade a company’s stock after it went public.

Perpetual futures have no settlement of the underlying asset, so exchanges do not require Anthropic stock to create a market. No settlement, delivery, or contract expiration has led to exchanges listing Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual futures markets for synthetic exposure to Anthropic’s valuation. There are currently 12 exchanges that provide Anthropic pre-IPO futures markets. Of these exchanges, six have more than $1M open interest. Throughout the State of the Network, we highlight the top five exchanges by open interest.

While 12 exchanges offer an Anthropic pre-IPO market, traders have recently gravitated towards one: Entropy. Entropy is a Hyperliquid HIP-3 exchange which launched its Anthropic perps market on August 19. Since then, Entropy’s Anthropic market has risen to the top 15% in average daily volume on Hyperliquid, highlighting significant interest in the Anthropic IPO.

In this State of the Network, we dissect how Entropy’s Anthropic pre-IPO perps market competes with other HIP-3 builders for market deployment, improves simulated aggregate order book depth, and contends with exchanges who support low to no funding rates on pre-IPO markets.

Entropy’s Emergence as an HIP-3 Builder

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 builder dynamics allows anyone who stakes 500k HYPE (~$40M) to issue three perp markets at no additional cost. Further market creation requires participating in a dutch auction with a floor price of 500 (~$40K) HYPE. One of Entropy’s first three markets was the Anthropic pre-IPO perp market.

Source: Talos CM Market Data Pro

Other HIP-3 builders have deployed pre-IPO markets to support price discovery before a company’s IPO. These exchanges rely on the internal order book to price pre-IPOs, whereas Entropy uses an external market source in addition to the price derived from the order book. The combination of price inputs could prove more accurate than competitors which could lead to Entropy gaining more market share amongst HIP-3 builders.

Source: Talos CM Market Data Pro

The price deviation across exchanges provides arbitrage opportunities. While these pre-IPO markets are naturally speculative without many public valuation references, traders can capitalize on cross-exchange discrepancies. There is currently a 2.47% price difference between centralized exchanges and Entropy.

HIP-3 Builder Timing Games

Covering a new pre-IPO market on Hyperliquid offers first-mover advantages including capturing initial interest and generating fees to recoup the cost of the market deployment. Markets deployed too early with little interest can lead to lower volumes, greater slippage, and higher funding rates.

Source: Talos CM Market Data Pro

Entropy, like centralized exchanges Binance, Bitget, and Gate.io, price the pre-IPO market for Anthropic using implied company valuation. Using implied company valuation temporarily prevents HIP-3 builders such as Trade.xyz, who prices pre-IPO companies using expected share price, from entering the market. Until Anthropic releases a public S1 filing or more information around the shares being sold, Trade.xyz remains sidelined. OKX faces a similar challenge by managing a pre-IPO market that assumes 10 billion shares to be sold and uses a price-per-share valuation.

Source: Talos CM Market Data Pro

No other HIP-3 builder currently publishing an Anthropic perp market prevents liquidity fragmentation. Entropy’s Anthropic perps market now has the second largest daily average volume over the past two weeks ($10.22M) and most open interest ($30.63M) despite launching over 2.5 months after Binance and Bitget.

Entropy Order Book Depth & Slippage v CEXs

Routing to the most optimal market based on tightest spread, deepest order book, or lowest funding rate increases liquidity and reduces execution cost. Simulating an aggregated order book shows Entropy’s deep liquidity around the midprice.

Source: Talos CM Market Data Pro

Comparing the aggregate average order book depth across 72 hours, Entropy has ~17% as much liquidity as Binance, Gate.io, and Bitget combined within ~0.5% from its midpoint. The order book exposed by Hyperliquid is less than 1% from midprice, highlighting deep liquidity around the bid-ask spread. This reduces the price impact when traders buy and sell pre-IPO contracts.

Source: Talos CM Market Data Pro

Entropy’s spread is comparable to centralized exchanges, averaging 1.5 bps over the past 2 weeks. This is the tightest spread amongst exchanges and reinforces Entropy’s high execution quality reducing trade slippage on Hyperliquid.

Funding Rates Incentivizing Exchange Use

Perp markets use funding rates to ensure the price of the perpetual future does not deviate too far from the spot price. How can an exchange charge funding rates if the company has not gone public? Pre-IPO markets created by HIP-3 builders do not require a spot price to charge funding rates. On Entropy, funding rates are calculated as the imbalance between the perpetual price and the oracle price, where the oracle price is a combination of an external or private market source and internal price derived from the order book.

Source: Talos CM Market Data Pro

Hyperliquid has a variable funding rate that resets every hour and Binance has a fixed funding rate of 0.005% every 8 hours. Bitget and Gate.io support little to no funding rate. Recent discussions surrounding AI risks led to spikes in the funding rate on Entropy. While having a funding rate suggests users have “skin in the game” and are incentivized to accurately price the Anthropic IPO because they are paying an hourly funding rate, it can become expensive to hold positions when volatility in valuation expectations increases, leading traders to hold positions in exchanges that charge lower funding rates.

Conclusion

The Anthropic pre-IPO markets are the latest example of the perpification of everything as traders speculate on non-public company valuations. Entropy’s traction and jumping to the top exchange by open interest reveals traders prefer Hyperliquid rails to trade pre-IPO perps instead of solely across CEX markets.

We expect other HIP-3 builders to enter the race to capture trading volumes around Anthropic’s upcoming IPO as public filings are released. Additional markets can challenge Entropy’s market share and fragment liquidity across markets who price pre-IPOs via implied company valuation or price per share.

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