Anthropic Isn't Public Yet, but Crypto Players Have Already Scored a Profit

While Wall Street argues over whether Anthropic's IPO valuation can reach $2 trillion, the crypto market has already staged an arbitrage feast.

For the same Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contract, Binance's quote briefly surged to $1,700 last week, while Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid quoted only around $110, a notional spread of more than 15x.

Behind this huge spread is not such a vast divergence in how the market values Anthropic, but a detail most traders overlooked: the number of shares underlying each contract. Using this rule difference, some traders earned nearly 20% over the past two weeks, and by the time the story reached most people's ears, the spread had already been filled by crowded trades to the point that little was left.

This is a pricing game unique to the crypto market: the people who make money are often those who understand the rules first.

Same pre-IPO asset, two share-count denominators

Binance's Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contract at $1,700 and Trade.xyz at $110 do not mean there is a 15x-plus arbitrage opportunity. The real difference lies in the different “share-count denominators” they use.

According to the initially published share capital parameters for the Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contracts, Binance used 1 billion shares as its estimated share count. At Binance's $1,700 quote, that implied an Anthropic valuation of about $1.7 trillion.

Trade.xyz follows another logic. From the start, it was designed as “one share per contract,” trading at a per-share price and, after listing, converting directly into a perpetual contract that tracks common stock, with no need for later share-count adjustments.

At present, Binance quotes on a 1 billion-share basis, while Anthropic's planned IPO is for 13 billion shares. At contract expiry, a Rebase (base adjustment) will be required—proportionally adjusting the number of contracts and the unit price to keep the total position value unchanged.

Based on the $1,700 quote and a 13 billion-share base, one original contract would become 13 shares, and the unit price would be diluted from $1,700 to about $130.77. Only at that price can it be compared with Trade.xyz's $110.

The roughly 18.9% spread between them is the profit room for cross-exchange arbitrage.

The strategy is not complicated. Go long on the platform with the lower price and short on the platform whose converted price is higher, sizing the positions according to the number of shares per contract. Traders do not need to bet on whether Anthropic's stock will rise or fall to capture the profit from the spread converging.

However, the strategy has an important precondition: traders need to predict how many shares the exchange will ultimately use for conversion.

This is precisely the most important and most controversial part of the entire arbitrage game.

12.7 billion or 16.9 billion? The arbitrage bet rests on who interprets the rules

In early November, the Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual market was effectively split into two camps.

One camp of traders believed exchanges would use the “issued common shares” basis—the number of shares actually outstanding after the IPO—and would not include all unexercised options and unvested restricted stock. Under this basis, the market generally estimated Anthropic's post-IPO share count at about 12.7 billion.

The other camp was wary. Anthropic's equity structure is far more complex than an ordinary company's, with employee options, restricted stock, convertible bonds, special share classes and other layers nested together. If exchanges adopted a “fully diluted share capital” basis, the total could approach 16.9 billion.

A 4.2 billion-share gap is enough to determine whether a trade makes or loses money.

Based on Binance's market price of $1,700 at the time, if 12.7 billion shares were used, a long-xyz/short-Binance combination could earn more than 20%; if 16.9 billion shares were used, the same trade would instead lose 8.6%; the breakeven point is about 15.455 billion shares.

In other words, the two sides disagreed over how exchanges would interpret an Anthropic listing document that was not yet finalized.

The camp backing “issued shares” cited the SpaceX precedent. Arbitrage trader Silicon-based Bird Ray noted that when SpaceX listed in June this year, Binance and OKX both adjusted based on the issued share count disclosed in the prospectus, without counting all options and unvested shares. He also broke down Anthropic's preferred stock conversion, issued common shares, charitable fund shares, convertible bonds, new IPO shares and other items one by one, and his calculation also landed near 12.7 billion shares.

Cautious trader Psyche warned that SpaceX was only a single example, and that exchanges have final discretion over the rules. Convertible bond terms in particular leave some flexibility, enough to affect the final share count included. More importantly, “issued share capital” is not the same as the market's usual “free float”; locked-up shares and unlisted share classes could all be included in the calculation.

Then on November 10, the market reached a key turning point.

The prospectus shows its hand: the 12.7 billion guess becomes 13.1 billion

That day, the uncertainty over the share-count basis finally cleared.

Anthropic submitted a second amended version of its S-1/A prospectus to the US SEC, disclosing key IPO data for the first time: the company plans to offer 825 million Class A common shares at $70–78.

It explicitly stated that after the IPO and concurrent private placement, Anthropic's issued shares are expected to be about 13.087 billion.

The next day, OKX was the first to follow, announcing an IPO reference share count of about 13.116 billion. On top of the prospectus figure, it included a small number of new shares from subsequent acquisitions and charitable matching shares, while excluding all unexercised options, unsettled RSUs (restricted stock units) and unissued reserved shares—partly confirming the market's reading of the “issued shares” basis.

On November 12, OKX formally executed a Rebase adjustment with a ratio of 1.3116 on Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contracts; Binance's update to its share capital parameters had not yet been officially announced.

As the key rules gradually became clear, the unease weighing on arbitrageurs faded, and the increase in certainty began to show in prices.

The arbitrage window is essentially closed

As the rules became clearer, the spread narrowed at a visible pace.

As of November 13, after conversion to a unified per-share basis, quotes on Binance, OKX, Hyperliquid and other exchanges had all converged in the $102–104 range. A spread that had once exceeded 20% was now only about 1%.

Clearly, the nature of Anthropic cross-exchange arbitrage has changed: the margin for error has shrunk significantly, while profits are negligible, and the risk-reward ratio for entering now has reversed sharply.

In addition, funding rates, trading slippage, margin occupancy costs and other factors are all “hidden killers” of profits.

This is the harshness of the crypto market: the most profitable opportunities usually belong to the few who understand the rules first and dare to bet amid uncertainty. By the time most people notice, it is no longer an opportunity.

This arbitrage around Anthropic's pre-IPO perpetual contracts is also a “cognitive lesson” in market pricing mechanisms.

As more and more unlisted unicorns are packaged into pre-IPO perpetual contracts, the pricing game is spreading from investment banks' roadshow rooms to the 24/7, nonstop crypto market.

Most people are used to staring at candlesticks and guessing direction; only a few will dig through contract terms, calculate share-count bases and study exchanges' historical handling rules. Yet excess returns hide in precisely these details that no one wants to spend time parsing.

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