Bitcoin Slides Below $69,000 as Anthropic's $64.4B IPO Drains Capital

Bitcoin fell to $68,527 on Nov. 13 in Binance's Tether market, and analysts are pointing at a single name as part of the reason: Anthropic. The AI company plans to raise as much as $64.4 billion in a Nasdaq listing expected Nov. 19, and investors appear to be selling crypto to raise cash for the deal. Bitcoin was recently trading near $68,920, down roughly 6.7% on the day.

The numbers behind the offering are hard to ignore. Anthropic will offer 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each, which would value the company at about $1.4 trillion at the top of the range. It follows SpaceX, which raised $75 billion in June — another megadeal that overlapped with a steep Bitcoin drawdown.

Benjamin Cowen, founder of Into The Cryptoverse, said Anthropic's IPO may be one factor behind the recent drop. Investors tend to raise capital ahead of large IPOs, and the crypto market is often where that capital comes from.

Why does this IPO compete with crypto directly?

About 20% of Anthropic's offering is allocated to retail investors. At the top of the price range, that slice is worth roughly $12.9 billion. Bitfinex flagged that allocation structure in a Nov. 11 report, arguing that crypto's investor base and the pool of buyers interested in the Anthropic IPO overlap — and could end up competing for limited capital.

The same worry surfaced before SpaceX. Adam Morgan, senior researcher at Lotech, said retail and institutional money was moving out of risk assets to secure SpaceX allocations. That pressure doesn't vanish the moment trading begins.

There's also a post-listing pull to factor in. Index analytics firm Intropic estimated demand from index-tracking funds at about $19 billion, and other investors may buy early in anticipation of fast inclusion in major indexes. Karsten Hesse, head of index events at Berenberg, said Anthropic could face the same index-related flow dynamics in early trading that surrounded SpaceX.

What happened around the SpaceX listing?

The precedent is sobering but not bearish forever. Bitcoin fell about 20% in the 30 days before SpaceX's June 12 listing, sliding from roughly $79,300 on May 13 to about $63,580. Ether fell harder, dropping about 26% from $2,258 to $1,666 over the same window.

The bottom didn't arrive on listing day, either. Bitcoin touched $57,800 intraday after the debut, and Ether printed a lower low at $1,512 on June 26. But three months later, both assets had recovered: on Sept. 12, Bitcoin stood at $77,278, up about 22%, while Ether rose about 52% to $2,526. Weakness ahead of a blockbuster IPO can reverse.

Bitfinex's read of the SpaceX episode puts the weight on the fundraising window, not the debut itself. Bitcoin had already fallen sharply before the investor roadshow began, then mostly moved sideways from the start of the roadshow through the first week after listing.

What does this change for Bitcoin holders?

The skew may not be symmetric this time. Bitfinex said Anthropic's IPO performance could be read as a market verdict on AI valuations and spill over to Bitcoin through the Nasdaq. If flows into spot Bitcoin ETFs don't turn positive, the downside risk from a disappointing IPO may outweigh the upside from a successful one.

Iliya Otychenko, chief analyst at CEX.IO, made a similar point during the SpaceX listing: the trend in the weeks after the debut mattered more than the first trading day. For IPO profits to rotate back into crypto, the newly listed stock would need to hold steady and spot Bitcoin ETF outflows would need to ease.

The practical question for the market is whether the SpaceX pattern repeats — a pre-listing drain, a post-listing bottom, then recovery. With the offering priced and trading set for Nov. 19, the answer starts arriving within weeks.