SpaceX didn’t just go public. It went public with a Bitcoin war chest that caught nearly everyone off guard.
The aerospace giant’s S-1 filing with the SEC revealed that SpaceX holds 18,712 BTC, worth approximately $1.2 billion at a Bitcoin price of around $63,000. That makes it the eighth-largest public company Bitcoin holder, a ranking nobody outside Hawthorne, California, apparently saw coming.
The numbers behind the surprise
Here’s the thing about SpaceX’s Bitcoin position: the street thought it was roughly half this size. Arkham Intelligence, which tracks on-chain wallets, had previously estimated SpaceX’s holdings at 8,285 BTC. The actual figure, 18,712 BTC, is more than double that estimate.
The acquisition cost basis for the entire position sits at about $661 million, which works out to an average purchase price of roughly $35,000 per Bitcoin. With BTC trading near $63,000, that’s a paper gain of roughly $540 million.
