Anthropic's IPO is the listing everyone is watching this month. The Wall Street Journal reported on 9 November 2026 that the company is targeting a Nasdaq debut under the ticker ANT for the week of 16 November (report via Investing.com), citing people familiar with the matter, and that the plan could still slip if markets turn. Phantom posted the same evening that the IPO "goes down next week", quoting a Kalshi post. Anthropic itself has not confirmed a trading date, so treat any date as reported, not settled.
Before a company lists, retail investors normally can't touch it. Crypto has found a way around that, at least for price exposure: pre-IPO perpetual futures. Phantom offers one for Anthropic inside its wallet app, and OKX, Kraken and Hyperliquid list Anthropic markets too (compared below). This guide explains what you actually get, what can go wrong, and how to do it step by step if you still want to.
What a pre-IPO perp actually is
Phantom's pre-IPO markets run on Hyperliquid and come from trade[XYZ], which calls them Pre-IPO Perpetuals. Its documentation is unusually direct about what they are not:
- Not shares. A position gives no ownership, voting rights, dividends, information rights or claim against the company.
- Not an IPO allocation. You are not getting in at the offer price.
- Not tokenized equity. No share sits behind the contract. It is a cash-settled linear perpetual, settled in USDC.
What it is: a continuous market where traders bet on where the company's future public stock will trade. Before listing there is no stock price to follow, so the market uses an internal oracle: a 30-minute moving average driven by the market's own order book. In other words, before listing the price is whatever buyers and sellers on that venue agree on. It is not anchored to any real trade in the shares.
Two design details matter:
- Discovery bounds. Each market has limits on how far the price can move from its starting reference during price discovery. The starting price is set by the venue and is not a forecast of the IPO price.
- Reduced funding before listing. Perps use funding payments to keep the contract near its reference price. Before listing, trade[XYZ] computes funding at 1% of its standard calculation. Phantom's help center notes funding is paid hourly.
At the time of writing, trade[XYZ]'s specification index lists the ANT market with a maximum leverage of 10x, cross margin, an anticipated listing date of 20 November 2026 ("for reference purposes only") and a 60-day grace period. These parameters can change, so check the live specification before trading.
What happens at listing, and if listing slips
If the company lists as expected, the contract converts into a normal equity perp that follows the real stock price, typically from the first regular trading session. Funding moves to the standard rate at that point.
That conversion is the riskiest moment in the product's life. The price switches from "what this order book thought" to "what Nasdaq says". If the two are far apart, the mark price can jump in one step. Phantom's product disclosures warn that mark price transitions at listing may trigger immediate liquidations. A stop-loss does not protect you from a step change: there may be no price in between to fill at.
If the listing is delayed beyond the grace period, or the company is acquired or the IPO is cancelled, the market can be closed and settled under the venue's alternative settlement rules. By default the settlement price is the time-weighted average price over the market's whole life, not the last price you saw. If the listing differs from what was expected (another exchange, a direct listing, a SPAC), the venue may adjust the reference or settle the market.
The risks, stated plainly
- Liquidation. At 10x, a move of about 10% against you can wipe out your margin, and liquidation usually happens a little before that. Pre-IPO prices can move that much in a day.
- Price discovery with no anchor. Before listing nobody knows the clearing price. The market price is a crowd guess.
- Thin liquidity. Phantom's disclosures flag higher volatility, limited liquidity and wider spreads for pre-IPO perps. Your fill can differ from the quote.
- The listing jump. Covered above: the switch to real prices can liquidate positions immediately.
- Funding. Small before listing, standard after. On a long hold, funding adds up.
- Settlement risk. Delays, cancellations or deals can end the market at a price you didn't choose.
- Halts. Phantom notes trading may be halted and settled at a different price.
- Regional restrictions. Phantom perps are not available in the US, the UK, or US-sanctioned jurisdictions, and trade[XYZ] does not offer its markets to US persons. Check Phantom's feature availability by region first.
- Platform stack. Your perps balance sits on Hyperliquid in USDC, and funds are bridged there for you. That is several systems between you and your money.
How to open a pre-IPO perp in Phantom, step by step
Phantom's help center documents one flow for all its perp markets; it has no separate guide for pre-IPO markets. The steps below follow Trade perps in Phantom.
Before you start
- Use the Phantom mobile app. The Phantom Terminal on desktop also trades perps, but supports market orders only.
- Perps are not available with Ledger accounts in Phantom.
- You can pay from your Cash account, CASH in your main wallet, SOL, or USDC on Solana. You don't have to fund a perps balance first.
- The minimum order size is 10.25 USDC.
- If you're creating a new Phantom account, use code
findcodesat signup in the mobile app: Phantom returns 10% of the fees you pay on eligible trades, such as spot and perps, for three months from when the code is applied. It can't be added later.
10% Fee Rebate for 3 Months on Phantom
Phantom is a self-custodial wallet whose perps, including pre-IPO markets, run on Hyperliquid. Sign up in the mobile app with findcodes and 10% of your eligible fees comes back for three months.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The code only applies at signup in the Phantom mobile app. Perps are leveraged derivatives with a high risk of loss and are not available in the US or the UK. Not financial advice.
Open the position
- Open the perp market, then tap Trade > Long (you expect the price to rise) or Trade > Short (you expect it to fall).
- Choose your payment source, enter a small amount and set your leverage. Check both the amount you're committing and the total leveraged position size.
- Tap Review and check those two numbers again.
- Check the liquidation price and its distance from the current price. That is how far the price can move against you before the position may be liquidated.
- Tap Add Auto Close to set a take-profit and a stop-loss, enter your settings, then tap Set. Neither is guaranteed to fill at the trigger price.
- Review your exit settings, payment method, quote and fees.
- Tap Confirm.
The position then appears under Your Positions on the asset page and in Perps on the Home tab. From there you can reduce the position, add margin, or close it with Close Long / Close Short. When you close, the remaining funds go to your perps balance in USDC, not back to the original payment source. You can withdraw them to your wallet from there.
Fees. Phantom lists a fee of 0.095% per position operation (0.05% Phantom plus 0.045% Hyperliquid). The first deposit and withdrawal cost 1 USDC each, later ones 0.07% plus network fees, and HIP-3 markets can add deployer-specific fees. Fees and funding come on top of any profit or loss.
Other platforms we have codes for
Phantom is not the only route. We checked every exchange and wallet we have a referral code for, using only each platform's own announcements and help pages. This is the picture at the time of writing; listings change quickly, so check the linked page before you trade.
OKX: Anthropic pre-IPO X-Perps
OKX has listed ANTHROPICUSD Pre-IPO X-Perps, which it describes as USD-settled expiry futures, and, before that, ANTHROPIC/USDT pre-market perpetual futures with leverage up to 5x. Its Anthropic page gives up to 10x on the X-Perps.
- How it's priced: on the company's implied valuation, not on a share price, until OKX rebases the contract once the real share count is disclosed. A rebase can briefly pause trading and cancels take-profit and stop-loss orders.
- At the IPO: the contracts convert to standard stock contracts. If the IPO is cancelled, OKX may delist or settle them at a price it determines.
- Where: OKX says its pre-IPO markets are live in Europe; availability depends on your region, so check in the app.
- Our code:
TRADEOFF20via okx.com/join/TRADEOFF20 (20% off trading fees for life).
Kraken: a pre-IPO perp, plus IPO access through xStocks
Kraken lists PF_ANTHROPICXUSD, a pre-IPO perpetual with up to 5x leverage. Unlike most venues, Kraken does not convert this contract: at 12:00 UTC on the day of the IPO it settles at a 30-minute weighted average index price, and a new contract, PF_ANTXUSD, is listed later once an index is available. Your position does not carry over.
Separately, Kraken's Anthropic IPO page offers IPO access through xStocks: you request ANTx at the offering price plus a 5% spread, fills are not guaranteed, and the tokens arrive when Anthropic lists. Kraken says this is not a pre-IPO product, and it is not available in the US, the UK, Canada or Australia.
- Our code:
j73wpf7wvia Kraken's invite link (20% off trading fees for life).
Hyperliquid: the same market Phantom uses
The ANT market described above is a HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid, deployed by trade[XYZ]. trade[XYZ] notes that its own website is not the only interface for these markets, so a Hyperliquid account can trade it directly. The same terms apply: up to 10x, conversion at listing, settlement rules if listing slips, and no access for US persons.
- Our code:
TRADEOFF4via app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/TRADEOFF4 (4% off trading fees).
No Anthropic pre-IPO product (at the time of writing)
- Backpack says on its Anthropic page that ANT will be considered for listing once it begins public trading and that it will announce officially when it does. Backpack does offer tokenized stocks today; see our tokenized stocks guide.
- Ondo Perps lists only OpenAI in its pre-IPO market specifications. There is no Anthropic market.
- Bybit has listed an Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual on its global platform, but our Bybit link is for Bybit EU, whose help center lists spot and spot margin trading only. Our code does not give access to it.
Alternatives that aren't perps
PreStocks. Phantom also lists PreStocks, pre-IPO tokens from an issuer called PreStocks. According to Phantom's help center, their prices reference the company's last known valuation, and PreStocks says each token is backed 1:1 by interests in a special purpose vehicle. That is a spot token rather than a leveraged contract, so there is no liquidation, but it is still not a direct share, and the backing depends on the issuer. PreStocks are not available in the US or the UK.
Tokenized stocks after listing. Once a company is public, tokenized stocks are the closer crypto equivalent of owning the share: spot tokens backed by real shares, with no leverage and no funding. Phantom offers tokenized stocks from xStocks and Ondo Finance, though not in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the US or the UK. Whether a specific new listing gets a token, and when, is up to those issuers. Our tokenized stocks guide covers how they work on Backpack.
A regular broker. If you just want to own the stock, buying it after listing through a broker is the plain option. Getting an IPO allocation itself depends on your broker and region.
Why DCA into a leveraged perp is not DCA
Dollar cost averaging works because each purchase is a small, fully paid piece of an asset you keep. A bad month can't take the earlier buys away. Perps break all three parts of that:
- Every add makes the same position bigger. Buying more of a perp doesn't create a new lot. It raises your average entry and moves your liquidation price.
- A single move can erase every earlier contribution. Example arithmetic: put 50 USDC of margin in each week at 5x for four weeks. That is 200 USDC controlling a 1,000 USDC position. A 20% move against your average entry costs 200 USDC: everything. On spot, the same move costs 20% of what you put in.
- Holding costs money. Funding is paid while the position is open, so time works against you instead of for you.
- Cross margin spreads the risk. In a cross-margin market, losses can draw on other funds in your perps balance, not just the margin for this trade.
Drag the slider to see how fast leverage closes the gap to liquidation:
Simplified: ignores maintenance margin, fees, and funding — real liquidation triggers slightly earlier than shown. This is why perps are a trading tool, not a savings plan.
If you take a pre-IPO position anyway, size it like a ticket you can afford to lose: a small fixed amount, low leverage (1x to 2x is still leverage), a stop-loss, and a plan for the listing day. Keep your scheduled buys in spot assets, separate from it. If what you want is long-term exposure to a newly listed company, DCA into the actual stock or a spot tokenized version after it lists.
FAQ
Can I buy pre-IPO shares with crypto? Not directly through these products. Pre-IPO perps give you price exposure through a cash-settled derivative. Tokens like PreStocks reference private companies through a vehicle, but they are not shares in the company either.
Do I own Anthropic stock if I trade the pre-IPO perp? No. You get no shares, votes, dividends or allocation. Profit and loss settle in USDC.
When is the Anthropic IPO? The Wall Street Journal reported on 9 November 2026 that Anthropic is targeting a Nasdaq listing under ANT for the week of 16 November. Anthropic has not confirmed a date, and the report notes the plan could be delayed. trade[XYZ]'s market lists 20 November 2026 as an anticipated date "for reference purposes only".
What happens to my position when the company lists? The contract converts to a normal equity perp that follows the real share price, usually from the first regular session. The switch can move the mark price in one step and liquidate positions.
What if the IPO is delayed or cancelled? After the grace period, the market can be settled. By default the price is the average over the market's whole life.
What is the Phantom referral code?
findcodes. Enter it when you create your account in the Phantom mobile app, and Phantom returns 10% of the fees you pay on eligible trades, such as spot and perps, for three months from when the code is applied. You can type it on the signup screen or open phantom.com/r/findcodes, which carries the code. It cannot be added after signup or in the browser extension. The fee itself is charged in full; the rebate is paid in CASH.
Which other platforms offer Anthropic pre-IPO trading? Of the platforms we have codes for, OKX (pre-IPO X-Perps and pre-market perps), Kraken (a pre-IPO perp that settles on IPO day, plus xStocks IPO access) and Hyperliquid (the same trade[XYZ] market Phantom uses). Backpack, Ondo Perps and Bybit EU had no Anthropic pre-IPO product at the time of writing.
Is it available in my country? Phantom perps are not available in the US, the UK or US-sanctioned jurisdictions. Check Phantom's region page before you sign up.
