The crowd outside the Nasdaq on Friday morning skewed young, male, and anxious.
George Manchin, a 22-year-old prop trader from Hong Kong, had put in for “a little bit” of SpaceX stock—“like a car, but it’s gonna be more than a car now.” Behind him, Hemanth Golla, an early investor through his venture fund High Circle Capital, is sitting on $300 million worth.
“It’s very exciting,” Golla told Fortune at the scene outside Nasdaq in Manhattan. “Not just monetarily, but also it’s a historic moment. I’ve been a big fan of Elon, so it’s been an amazing journey so far.”
There were more than two people in astronaut outfits, bouncing around between different press interviews; there were teenage “retired crypto traders” with hired cameramen talking about the IPO. The SpaceX IPO, the biggest in history, is a rare market event that doubles as a tourist attraction. The sidewalk outside the Nasdaq on Friday seemed to contain a microcosm of the entire psychology of this market: early money waiting for its exit window; retail money rushing in; and a broad, cheerful consensus that the company is overvalued—but it doesn’t really matter.
“Everyone knows it’s overvalued, but do they care?” said Jasper Howard, a 19-year-old who calls himself the “Clavicular of Crypto,” referring to the notorious looksmaxxing streamer. He said he was “retired” from crypto, but still streaming.
“We know in 10 years, space exploration is gonna be this huge thing,” Howard said. “AI is gonna be this huge thing. So it doesn’t really matter right now if it’s overvalued, because in the future it will be fairly valued.”
