Crypto traders valued Unitree Robotics at more than four times its IPO valuation through a Hyperliquid perpetual contract before the company began trading in Shanghai. Even so, the robot maker’s actual opening price came in about 75% above the valuation implied by that crypto market.
Unitree, a Hangzhou-based company known for humanoid and quadruped robots, began trading Wednesday at 1,100 yuan ($163.12), representing a 629% jump from its IPO price of 150.8 yuan. The opening price put the company’s market value at roughly 445 billion yuan ($66 billion).
Before the listing, a synthetic Unitree market on Hyperliquid had traded around $92-$94, suggesting a company valuation of approximately $38 billion, according to Allium.
That meant Unitree’s real-market opening price was roughly 75% higher than the level established by crypto traders before any publicly listed shares had changed hands.
The Hyperliquid instrument is a perpetual futures contract, meaning traders speculate on Unitree’s share price without actually owning shares. The product was introduced by external developer xyz.trade using Hyperliquid’s infrastructure and operates around the clock, allowing traders to position themselves ahead of the Shanghai listing.
Crypto traders were therefore considerably more optimistic than the investment banks involved in the IPO. Unitree’s public offering valued the company at about $9 billion, compared with roughly $38 billion implied by the perpetual contract.
Unitree Perpetual Contract Surges
The crypto-based Unitree market gained additional momentum after the stock began trading. The UNITREE-USDC contract was around $121 Wednesday morning, up approximately 20% over 24 hours, after briefly climbing above $140.
Trading volume reached roughly $64 million, while open interest stood at about $29 million.
Unitree represents the second major experiment this summer in using crypto perpetual markets to estimate the value of a private company before its shares begin trading on a traditional exchange.
SpaceX Set an Early Benchmark
SpaceX provided an earlier example of how these markets can perform. Ahead of its June listing, perpetual futures priced the company’s stock at approximately $170 per share the night before trading began.
SpaceX subsequently climbed above $176 during its opening session before closing at $161, landing close to the level that crypto traders had anticipated for first-day demand.
The SpaceX market was substantially larger than Unitree’s. Open interest in its Hyperliquid contract reached approximately $216 million shortly before the listing, while more than $150 million in trading volume was recorded over a 24-hour period.
By comparison, Unitree’s roughly $29 million in open interest represents a much smaller amount of capital attempting to establish a pre-IPO valuation.
Leverage Raises the Risk
The Unitree perpetual market also highlights the risks involved in using leveraged crypto contracts to predict traditional stock prices.
The instrument allows leverage of up to 10 times, meaning even relatively small price movements can trigger liquidations and force traders to close their positions.
Those risks became apparent after Unitree began trading. Funding on the contract was around negative 0.13%, meaning traders positioned for a decline were effectively paying those betting on further upside to maintain their positions.
The two markets illustrate different outcomes for crypto-based price discovery. SpaceX demonstrated that a perpetual contract can come remarkably close to predicting an IPO’s opening price.
Unitree offered a different lesson: crypto traders correctly identified that the IPO valuation appeared too low, but the Shanghai market ultimately opened at a level substantially above even their aggressive leveraged bets.
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