Traders can now bet on Anthropic's IPO price with 10x leverage on Hyperliquid

What launched on Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid, a decentralized crypto exchange, has begun offering perpetual futures tied to Anthropic before the company has gone public. A perpetual future is a contract that tracks a price and has no expiry date, so traders can hold it as long as they can cover the losses. As bloomingbit reported, citing CoinDesk's Oct. 31 coverage, the two main examples are Entropy's ANTH and trade.xyz's ANT.

The two contracts track different things. ANTH follows Anthropic's overall valuation, where a contract price of $1 stands for a $1 billion valuation. At that scale, a price of $1,880 would mean the market values the company at about $1.88 trillion. ANT instead follows the price of one Class A share of Anthropic.

A bet on a price, not a stake

Nobody holding these contracts owns any part of Anthropic. There are no shares and no shareholder rights. Traders post USDC, a stablecoin (a digital token meant to hold the value of a dollar), as collateral. Gains and losses are then paid out in cash-equivalent assets.

Anthropic has also put out its own notice urging caution. It tells people to be wary of any product that claims to offer the public a piece of the company, whether through forward contracts or tokenized versions of its securities. The notice is a reminder that these instruments are not endorsed by the company.

How 10x leverage cuts both ways

Leverage means borrowing to make a position larger than your own money would allow. ANT offers up to 10x. That multiplies gains, but it also means a 10% move against you can wipe out your entire margin, the money you put up to open the trade.

The early numbers show how jumpy the market is. Within three hours of trading starting, ANT fell to around $110 from about $138. At that point trading volume was $8.7 million and open interest, the total size of positions still open, was $2.2 million. Those are small sums for a company discussed in trillions, which is why a few large trades can push the price around.

The danger is forced liquidation. When a leveraged trader's margin runs out, the exchange closes the position automatically. Those forced sales can push the price down further and trigger more liquidations.

Dates, settlement and a warning from May

trade.xyz has pencilled in Nov. 20 as Anthropic's listing date. That is the platform operator's own estimate, and Anthropic has not confirmed it. If the listing happens, ANT turns into an ordinary perpetual future tied to the stock price.

If the listing is delayed, a 60-day grace period runs through Jan. 19, 2027. If Anthropic still has not gone public by then, the contract settles at the average price since trading began. The exchange says it may pick a different benchmark if it judges that method unfair. A trader could therefore end up with a payout set by a formula, not by any real share price.

The risk is not hypothetical. In May, a SpaceX-linked futures product on Hyperliquid dropped about 45% in 30 minutes. That triggered forced liquidations for 405 investors.

How to read these prices

Today's issue also carries a report that Anthropic's expected IPO valuation has slipped to $1.5T from $2T. Like this story, that one is unconfirmed. Neither a futures price nor a headline about a valuation is a filing, and neither tells you how good Claude is or what it will cost next year.

For most readers the useful move is simple. Notice the prices, understand how fragile they are, and keep your tools and plans independent of them.