Bitcoin Slips Below $62K as Record SpaceX IPO Looms, $363M Liquidated

Crypto News

Bitcoin traded under pressure as markets braced for the largest stock debut in history. SpaceX confirmed an offer price of $135 per share, with trading set to begin on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12. The company will sell about 555.6 million shares to raise roughly $75 billion, implying a valuation near $1.75 trillion — more than double Saudi Aramco's prior record. Notably, blockchain venues priced the deal first: a Hyperliquid-based decentralized exchange listed SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual futures near $150 on May 18, a contract that later changed hands 16 to 20 percent above the official price, with cumulative turnover around $2.2 billion.

In enterprise technology, monitoring firm Datadog unveiled more than 100 new features at its annual DASH 2026 conference, centered on an expanded Bits AI that can now detect, investigate and remediate software issues within preset guardrails. The company also introduced AI Guard, a security product targeting prompt-injection and agent-poisoning attacks by combining telemetry tracing with behavioral anomaly analysis. Executives argued that the winners of the AI era will be the firms that build operational control around models rather than those merely chasing better models. The new tools integrate with existing platforms, including Anthropic's Claude and Slack, signaling intensifying competition over how autonomous agents are governed.

South Korean exchange Bithumb moved to lower the barrier to trading, launching its AI Trade Kit. The service lets users check prices, build automated strategies and execute live orders simply by conversing with generative-AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini. Algorithmic trading traditionally required coding knowledge or separate software, but the platform reduces that to plain-language instructions. Because crypto markets run around the clock, the tool aims to help retail investors react to volatility without watching screens continuously. The feature launches first on desktop, with mobile support to follow — a sign that exchanges are shifting from fee wars toward AI-driven differentiation.

Outside crypto, US healthcare insurer Centene illustrated where traditional capital continues to flow, reporting first-quarter 2026 revenue of $49.94 billion and adjusted earnings of $3.37 per share. Operating cash flow reached $4.37 billion as the insurer trimmed $1 billion in debt, though membership slipped to 26.27 million. The company also detailed community investments, including a $10 million commitment by subsidiary Health Net to expand a Long Beach care campus and a separate $10 million allocation to a Los Angeles housing fund. The contrast underscores how investors keep rotating toward established equities and mega-cap listings while speculative crypto fundraising contracts.

Broader markets turned defensive amid renewed geopolitical risk. Iran announced a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil-shipping corridor, following reported US strikes — a development that weighed on global risk appetite and deepened bear-market caution. Bitcoin slipped below the $62,000 level to trade around $61,993, down roughly 1 percent on the day. On-chain liquidation data showed $363 million in crypto futures wiped out over 24 hours, with long positions accounting for $233 million. Bitcoin and Ether led the losses at $100 million and $78.7 million respectively. Separately, Delaware and New Jersey advanced bills to ban crypto ATMs over fee concerns.

Sentiment across individual tokens stayed sharply divided. Strax tumbled 11.82 percent yet drew outsized trading volume, topping greed rankings with a score of 80. It was followed by Astar at 77, Jito at 68, Worldcoin at 65 and OpenLedger at 61. At the opposite end, Sahara AI registered a reading of 0, with Zerobase, Ethena and Walrus also sitting deep in fear territory. The split highlights how capital is concentrating in a handful of altcoins while broader risk appetite remains depressed. Ripple and Worldcoin managed modest daily gains even as the overall market drifted lower.

COINOTAG views these threads as a single story of capital rotation under extreme caution. Our aggregate market data shows the Fear & Greed Index pinned at 12 — Extreme Fear — with Bitcoin dominance elevated at 70.3 percent and total crypto market capitalization near $1.79 trillion, a profile consistent with investors retreating into Bitcoin while abandoning the long tail. Primary fundraising tells the same story: public token sales raised just $58 million in the second quarter, an 85 percent collapse and a five-year low. With a record $75 billion IPO and on-chain derivatives now competing for the same risk dollars, the near-term squeeze on speculative crypto liquidity looks structural rather than sentiment-driven.