Anthropic to launch in October, is on-chain pre-IPO pricing a prophecy or an echo?

According to Woofun AI, Anthropic is expected to go public in October, and this expectation has directly spawned explosive growth in the on-chain pre-IPO market. As one of the most high-profile events on the track in the second half of this year, Entropy, the market deployer on Hyperliquid, launched an ANTH perpetual contract under Anthropic on August 25, marking a new phase in synthetic asset pricing.

Just one week after launch, the ANTH contract price on the Entropy platform climbed to $1,979.0. The price implied a company valuation of approximately $1.98 trillion, based on its specific pricing rules. Notably, this is only a 1% difference compared to Anthropic's target valuation of around $2 trillion revealed in August by media such as 21st Century Economic Report. As of 10:00 on September 2, data compiled by Woofun AI showed that ANTH contracts had a turnover of 9.63 million US dollars within 24 hours, and the value of open contracts was 9.3 million US dollars, showing initial market activity.

However, Entropy isn't the only channel to gain Anthropic pre-IPO exposure. Currently, there are more than a dozen places in the market that provide this kind of exposure. The products offered by these places are mainly divided into three distinct structures, resulting in prices ranging from $872 to $1,946, and the risk levels and pricing logic behind them also vary.

This price dispersion reflects the market's differentiated assessment of risk premiums for different product structures, and investors need to carefully screen the underlying asset support situation of various products.

Looking back at the first half of the year, SPV tokenization was the mainstream gameplay for pre-IPO exposure, and its core narrative was that the claim was backed by real shares. PreStocks represents this model. The platform holds company shares through special purpose carriers (SPVs) and sells them in pieces to retail investors, claiming that the tokens are supported by SPV's 1:1 exposure to the underlying company's shares. PreStocks' Anthropic token hit an all-time high of $1,408.85 on May 9.

However, May 13 became a key turning point. Anthropic issued an official statement clearly prohibiting special purpose carriers from acquiring its shares, stating that any transfer of shares to SPV is null and void. Unapproved transfers will not be recognized in the company's books of accounts, and at the same time criticized intermediaries such as Open Door Partners, Hiive, and Forge by name. Hit by this, PreStocks' Anthropic token plummeted 34% in seven days, and the “there is real stock behind” narrative completely collapsed.

Currently, ANTHROPIC tokens on Solana are quoted at $871.75, have a market capitalization of about $6.44 million, a 24-hour turnover of only $411,000, and a circulation of 7,383 units. They are mainly traded on decentralized exchanges such as Meteora and Raydium, and liquidity has shrunk significantly.

Another popular gameplay in the first half of the year was the subscription system, represented by MSX. This model is not a continuous trading market; rather, it is closer to opening new shares. The platform opens a subscription window at a custom price, then opens a repurchase window, and there is no buyer and seller coordination throughout the process. MSX Maitong's second Anthropic subscription began on May 16. The subscription price is 855 USDT, corresponding to a valuation of 950 billion US dollars. Currently, the repurchase application is open, but the exact redemption price has not yet been announced. In contrast, synthetic perpetual contracts rose rapidly in the second half of the year.

On June 2, a few hours after Anthropic secretly submitted S-1 documents to the SEC, Binance launched the ANTHROPICUSDT pre-IPO perpetual contract, which was priced at around $1,734 at the time. Bitget followed suit. Kraken launched similar products on June 15 and Coinbase (COIN.US) on June 22, then Bybit joined the ranks. These products are all pure synthetic, cash-settled contracts, and do not involve real equity.

In the same month, Ventuals, an early on-chain pre-IPO perpetual platform, ceased operations, causing a brief gap in the on-chain market. Entropy launched ANTH on August 25 to fill this gap.

The pricing mechanism of synthetic perpetual contracts and their risk exposure is key to understanding the current market. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, Bitget, and ANTH listed on Entropy all fall into this category. Users don't have any shares or certificates in their hands; they only have price contracts that can be leveraged to go long and short. There are differences in the estimated share capital caliber used by various platforms: Binance, Bitget, etc. are priced at 1 billion shares; OKX carried out a 10:1 rebase on June 30, 2026 to change the estimated share capital to 10 billion shares, so its price is about 1/10 of the other platforms, but the corresponding company's valuation is consistent.

Entropy's pricing is more straightforward, with each $1 contract price representing $1 billion in market capitalization, so Binance's $1,967.0 corresponds to a valuation of about $1.967 trillion, and Entropy's $1,980.1 corresponds to a valuation of about $1.980 trillion. The biggest risk for this type of product is that the price lacks external anchoring. The platform practices of the three public methods are highly consistent: Binance's token price takes the average of the platform's last 10-second transaction price; Kraken uses its own PreMarket composite index, which is entirely derived from the contract's own order book and does not use external data sources; Entropy's oracles are weighted by aggregating their own market EMA and private equity data, with a minimum of 95% self-weight and a minimum of 5% retention of external data, making it the only platform that leaves room for external data.

Perpetual contracts usually rely on funding rates to pull the price back to the oracles, but Entropy raised the funding rate to 1/800 of the normal level because private equity data updates are slow, and high fees will punish traders who respond quickly. The cost is that capital fees can only counter extreme and continuous divergences. If Anthropic is not listed, Entropy's ANTH has a clear settlement date of August 18, 2028. At that time, TWAP cash settlement at the end of 6 months of the marked price will be made, and the operator can settle the TWAP 30 days in advance and reserve the right to amend; Kraken has no expiration date, and the company's post-listing contract will be converted to common stock perpetual at xStocks spot price.

Take SpaceX as an example. It went public on June 12 at an issue price of 135 US dollars (corresponding to a valuation of about 1.77 trillion US dollars). It opened at $150 on the first day and closed at $160.95, an increase of 19.2%, and its closing market value exceeded 2.1 trillion dollars. Prior to listing, SpaceX's perpetual price was between $162 and $180, with an implied valuation of 2.1 trillion to 2.3 trillion dollars, which was 20% to 35% higher than the issue price, yet it was almost in line with the closing market value on the first day. This indicates that perpetual contracts predict the price the market is willing to pay, not intrinsic value.

ANTHROPIC's unliquidated contracts on 12 exchanges totaled about US$46.32 million, plus Entropy's US$9.3 million, totaling about US$55.62 million across the network, which is about 36,000 times different from the valuation of 1.98 trillion. This extremely small capital volume supports huge valuations, and the price source is closed and the funding rate is extremely low. The more reasonable explanation is that market traders have reached consensus based on the same batch of IPO reports, rather than independent value discoveries.

In summary, the price of the Anthropic pre-IPO market reflects participants' emotions and expectations more than the company's intrinsic value. Investors should be wary of treating the price of such synthetic assets as an accurate valuation reference, but rather as a trading target of market sentiment. In the absence of real equity support and effective external anchoring, these prices are extremely susceptible to market fervor and liquidity, and need to be treated with caution.