Crypto Trading Begins Before Anthropic IPO; Leveraged Contract Falls 20%
A leveraged ANT contract, which does not give buyers shares in the company, started trading on Hyperliquid before Anthropic’s IPO. Its price fell by about 20% in the first few hours.
Before Anthropic shares started trading on the stock market, investors began betting on what the company’s future share price might be through crypto markets. According to CoinDesk, two perpetual futures contracts are available on Hyperliquid: Entropy’s ANTH and trade.xyz’s ANT.
These products let investors bet on whether a price will go up or down. They do not give investors ownership of the company. The contracts do not provide company shares, IPO share allocations, or voting rights. Since the company does not yet have a publicly traded share price, the market operator sets the starting price. Investors’ expectations then affect the price.
ANT fell from $138 to $110 in its first hours
According to data from Hyperliquid cited in the report, ANT started trading at about $138 at 09:00 Eastern Time on its first day. By around 11:50, its price had fallen to $110. During this drop of about 20%, trading volume reached $8.7 million, and the total value of open positions was $2.2 million.
ANT offers leverage of up to 10x. This means that a 10% price move against a position could wipe out all the money used as its margin. The position could be closed even sooner because traders must also meet minimum margin requirements.
ANT is linked to Anthropic’s Class A shares and pays out in cash using USDC. Its price is based on a 30-minute moving average calculated from open orders in the order book. The platform operator also sets limits on how far the price can move.
The prices of the two contracts mean different things
Entropy’s ANTH contract works differently. Its price is linked to the company’s total value. Every $1 in the contract price represents a company valuation of $1 billion. This means a contract price of about 1,880 suggests an expected company value of around $1.9 trillion.
This number is not an IPO valuation set by Anthropic. It comes from the way the derivatives market prices the contract. Anthropic and its banks will set the actual IPO price separately, without being guided by these markets.
What happens to the contract if the IPO is delayed?
trade.xyz expects Anthropic to list its shares on November 20. However, this date is the platform’s estimate and has not been confirmed by Anthropic. If the shares start trading, ANT is expected to become a standard perpetual futures contract that follows the share price during the first regular trading session.
If the IPO is delayed, the platform allows an extra 60 days, until January 19, 2027. If the shares have still not started trading by that date, ANT will be settled in cash based on its average trading price since it first became available. The platform says it may use another calculation method if that average would lead to an unfair result.
Low trading activity could cause bigger price swings
When there are few buy and sell orders in pre-IPO markets, prices can change very quickly. It can also be hard for investors to close their positions. The report mentions a separate SpaceX contract that fell by about 45% on Hyperliquid in May in roughly 30 minutes. As a result, 405 users had their positions liquidated.
Anthropic has not made any public statement about the two contracts discussed here. The company’s help page warns people not to claim that it sells shares to the public through forward contracts or tokenized securities. However, Anthropic has not explained whether this warning also covers perpetual contracts that do not deliver shares.
Not investment advice.