Hello, accommodating readers! Byron is out this week, doing whatever Byron does when he’s not writing The Breakdown. Byron will be back next week for your regular scheduled programming.

This week, you’re getting a taste of our other Blockworks newsletter, 0xResearch. You’ll get daily alpha and insights from our Blockworks Research analysts.

Market Update

Today saw red across most of the sectors as last week's macro damage carried into the weekend. BTC -1.0%, S&P 500 -0.3%, NASDAQ 100 -0.5%, gold -0.2%. Crypto sectors got hit hardest, with RWA off 5% and AI down nearly 4%. Perps and DeFi were the only real green, and that came from isolated token strength rather than broad buying.

The selloff appears rates-driven. April's consumer price index (CPI) printed at 3.8% on Wednesday, pulling 10-year Treasury yields to 4.58%, while crude oil topped $100 on stalled US-Iran diplomacy. Fed funds markets now price nearly 50% odds of a hike before year-end and effectively zero cuts. 

On the one-month tape, the leaders and laggards separate clearly. Privacy Index +33.4%, Crypto Miners +19.0%, and the 2025 Crypto Equity Cohort +10.2% all sit above NASDAQ +9.1% and far ahead of BTC's +1.0%. Lending -23.0%, Ethereum Eco -21.8%, and Meme -15.5% anchor the other end. The winning sectors come from idiosyncratic moves in a handful of names (ZEC, HYPE), while high-beta sector names such as L1s and most DeFi had nothing to lean on as rate pressure mounted. 

Inside the miners cohort, Argo Blockchain (ARBK) led at +44.8% with Hut 8 (HUT) +36.9%, Riot (RIOT) +30.2%, and Core Scientific (CORZ) +21.9%. The driver is the AI and high-performance computing (HPC) pivot: Hut 8 secured a 15-year, 352 MW lease at Beacon Point valued at $9.8B; Riot reported $33.2M in Q1 data center revenue; Core Scientific is scaling its Pecos, Texas campus to 1.5 GW for AI workloads, converting 300 MW of existing BTC mining capacity. IREN lagged at +8.6% (-4.8% on the week) after closing a $3.0B convertible notes offering on May 14 at a 32.5% conversion premium; the stock fell about 10% on dilution fears despite simultaneous partnership announcements.

— Sam

Pre-IPO SpaceX

Last week, we looked at TradeXYZ’s first pre-IPO perpetual market, Cerebras Systems (CBRS), and asked whether the market was surfacing price discovery ahead of the IPO or simply pricing an access premium for exposure that traders could not get elsewhere.

The answer came quickly. CBRS opened on Nasdaq at $350, and TradeXYZ’s pre-IPO market was already within striking distance before the stock went live. Across the final hour before the Nasdaq print, TradeXYZ’s CBRS market traded at a VWAP only 1.2% above the eventual opening price. In the final minute before the cross, CBRS was trading around $360 on TradeXYZ, just 2.8% above Nasdaq’s first print.

The pre-IPO market processed over $200M in pre-open notional volume at a 61.4 bps median spread, a functional level of liquidity for a contract with no liquid public reference. Traders were also seen pulling up TradeXYZ’s CBRS price alongside Bloomberg, treating it as a live valuation reference before Nasdaq opened.

In typical Hyperliquid and TradeXYZ fashion, the team is now moving from validation to scale. After CBRS showed that a pre-IPO perpetual could support meaningful liquidity and anticipate the public open, Reuters reported that SpaceX could list on Nasdaq as early as June 12, potentially raising $75B at a $1.75T valuation, which would make it the largest stock-market debut in history. TradeXYZ responded by launching a live SpaceX pre-IPO market, giving traders 24/7 synthetic exposure and a real-time valuation reference before one of the most anticipated listings ever reaches public markets.

The market became active immediately. In its first 13 hours of trading, TradeXYZ’s SPCX market processed roughly $41.6M in notional volume across more than 56k trades, with open interest already near $24.8M. The contract opened around $180, traded as high as $230, and was recently marked near $213. If SPCX is read as a valuation reference, that mark implies traders are pricing SpaceX at roughly $2.5T, materially above the reported $1.75T IPO valuation.

With SPCX putting TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid at the center of one of the most important private-market trades in the world, the key question is whether the market can convert attention into sustained liquidity, net-new users, and broader flow into the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

— Shaunda

Q1 was a transformative quarter for Jito, marked by rapid validator adoption of BAM and growth in institutional distribution channels.

Join us in partnership with Jito for their official Q1 Quarterly Call, where we’ll break down the numbers, trends, and key takeaways from Q1 for one of crypto’s most influential protocols.

On Wednesday, May 20 at 1 pm ET, watch the call live from X, YouTube, LinkedIn or Blockworks.com.