A trillionaire walks among us

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THE WEEK IN MARKETS

Relief is the word. A US-Iran peace framework, the largest IPO in history, and some murmurings around key crypto regulation have added some tailwinds in markets. Crypto caught the mood. Bitcoin is trading around $65.4K, up roughly 4% on the week after briefly dipping below $60K earlier this month. Ethereum pushed up around 3.7% to hover near $1,731. Solana and XRP are also on the move. 

The fresh peace framework pulled a significant amount of geopolitical anxiety out of the market overnight.

Oil felt it most. Brent crude dropped over 4.5% to below $83.40 per barrel, a three-month low. A formal signing ceremony between the US and Iran is expected for Friday in Switzerland, opening a 60-day window to negotiate sanctions relief and nuclear terms. Whether it holds is the open question.

In Washington, the Clarity Act is still moving. The White House is targeting a 4 July deadline, with negotiators working daily to resolve outstanding objections from Democratic senators on banking and ethics provisions. If it crosses the line, it becomes the most definitive regulatory framework the crypto industry has seen.

SpaceX went public on Friday. The Nasdaq debut under SPCX raised $75 billion at $135 per share, the largest IPO in history, and closed its first session up over 19% at $160.95, pushing its market cap to $2.1 trillion. 

The Fed meets Wednesday. It will be Kevin Warsh’s first press conference as chair. With oil lower, inflation higher, and markets on the rise, the question is whether he signals a pivot or plays it straight.

🔥 WHAT’S UP: Bitcoin (BTC) | +4% | 7 days

💧 WHAT’S DOWN: Brent Crude | -4.5% | 7 days

Data correct as at 15 June 2026.

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THE BIG READ 

SpaceX hype and a very large bag of Bitcoin in its treasury

SpaceX went public on Friday and, as expected, investors lapped up the servings. Reuters reports that SpaceX shares jumped 19% on the day, sending the company’s value beyond $2 trillion, making it the 9th biggest asset in the world overnight and minting the world’s first trillionaire in the process. It’s Elon Musk, by the way, if you haven’t been paying attention.

Seth Hickle, chief investment officer at Mindset Wealth Management, commenting to Reuters:“For many investors, SpaceX is the closest thing to investing in the railroads during the Industrial Revolution, and they are willing to pay the Elon Musk premium for that opportunity.”

Not everyone is convinced. Finance columnist Jeff Sommer, writing for the New York Times, writes: “Who am I to say that cheap, virtually limitless AI generated from Earth’s orbit won’t happen just as Mr. Musk says it will? Intellectually, I’m willing to contemplate the possibility that he is truly leading the world to a vibrant future, on this planet, on the moon and eventually on Mars. But from a purely investing perspective, I’m keeping my feet firmly on the ground.”

Drawing on arguments from Jay Ritter, an economist and IPO expert at the University of Florida, Sommer notes that SpaceX is currently priced at roughly 40 times what it actually earns in a year. In other words, if SpaceX makes $1 in sales, the market says the company is worth $40. That is an extreme level of optimism. When companies are valued that highly, investors who buy in at that price almost never make money over the next three years, according to data by Ritter. The stock either needs sales to grow dramatically to justify the price, or the price has to come down. The broader market obviously believes that the first outcome will play out.

Source: companiesmarketcap.com/assets-by-market-cap/

There are two crypto angles to the story: one good, one not so good. Let’s start with the not-so-good, and it’s fairly straightforward. It’s no secret that Bitcoin has been sluggish since pretty much November 2025, while other assets like AI stocks have been on fire. Nvidia and others have been soaring and making the rest of the S&P 500 look better than it is in the process. So it comes down to where you’d rather be if you had to choose. You don’t have to, but if you had to, you naturally follow the money.

The good news is that the company and Elon Musk seemingly believe in Bitcoin’s long-term thesis, given that they hold more than a billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. SpaceX went public with more Bitcoin on its books than any company has ever brought to a stock market listing. It has bought 18,712 bitcoin for around $661 million. By 31 March, that stack was worth $1.29 billion.

Source: BitcoinTreasuries.net, Public Companies Bitcoin Treasury Reserves.

It’s important to understand that SpaceX is not a crypto company, which sets them apart from other public companies on this list. It builds rockets and satellites. SpaceX simply decided that Bitcoin could be sensible place to keep spare capital, the same way other companies keep it in government bonds or savings accounts.

CoinDesk reports: “Neither Tesla nor SpaceX – both Elon Musk-owned firms – have ever shown an appetite for trading their stack. These companies continue to hold (at least for now) bitcoin through public earnings cycles and analyst questions, while the position swings, hands every Fortune 500 finance chief a working example of mega-caps that treat bitcoin as a reserve asset, absorbs the earnings noise and moves on.”

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PICTURE THIS 

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

*Past performance is not indicative of future performance. 

US inflation is back above 4%. The last time that happened, it was on its way to 9%. May’s 4.2% inflation reading is the first hard evidence that the energy shock from the closing of the Strait of Hormuz is landing in the data.

The timing couldn’t be more loaded. Kevin Warsh was just sworn in as Federal Reserve Chair, and his first interest rate decision on Wednesday this week is already one of the most consequential in years. President Trump wants cuts, but Warsh is a known hawk who has spent years arguing that central bank independence is non-negotiable.

Many analysts are convinced that rate cuts this year are a long shot, and we could even see hikes in the near future. 

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QUICK TAKES 

🚀 SpaceX’s IPO is dazzling, but the math ain’t mathing 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX roadshow had Wall Street mesmerised, and ordinary investors were handed an unusually large slice of the offering. The problem? The valuation is so stretched that historical data challenges the probability of solid returns over the next few years, writes Jeff Sommer in the New York Times. At a 40-to-one price-to-sales ratio, stocks at that level have rarely made money in the three years that follow. With Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs still in the pipeline and tech valuations at eye-watering levels, some are asking whether this is already a bubble, or just the beginning of one. – Read more

⚡ Vitalik says options-based DeFi is already here

Ethereum’s co-founder has been thinking out loud about the next phase of decentralised finance, and his conclusion is that it’s already underway. Options-based DeFi, financial derivatives built on-chain, is quietly gaining traction, and Vitalik thinks the infrastructure is more ready than most people realise. For crypto-native investors watching where serious capital is moving next, this is worth paying attention to. – Read more

📉 Goldman says forget rate cuts, for now

Goldman Sachs Research has pushed back its forecast for Fed rate cuts to June and December 2027, having previously expected the first cut in December 2026. The reason? The jobs market has held up better than expected, and core PCE inflation is sitting at 3.3%, well above the Fed’s 2% target, and Goldman expects it to remain above 3% throughout 2026. –  Read more

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TOWN HALL

Source: https://x.com/patrickjwitt/status/2063991124901925324

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PROBABLY SOMETHING

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