Bybit has listed USDT-denominated perpetual contracts on Chinese robotics firm Unitree and AI startup Moonshot AI, pushing the exchange's TradFi perpetuals lineup past 200 products spanning equities, ETFs, commodities, indices and private companies. The Dubai-based exchange first opened this category in April, and the two new additions mark its latest push into pre-IPO exposure for retail and institutional traders.
Unitree received approval from China's securities regulator in July to pursue an IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market, giving Bybit's contract a concrete listing event for traders to price against. Moonshot AI, by contrast, has no confirmed public listing timeline, meaning its perpetual trades purely on private-market sentiment rather than a scheduled catalyst.
The launch follows a pattern set earlier this year: Binance, Coinbase and Kraken all rolled out SpaceX-linked perpetual contracts ahead of that company's June listing, and rival platforms have since raced to add other pre-IPO names as demand for exposure to private companies has grown among crypto-native traders who have no other route into those cap tables.
Tokenized Equities Momentum Builds
The broader tokenized-stock market Bybit is tapping into has expanded quickly. Onchain asset tracker RWA.xyz shows distributed value in tokenized stocks near $2.38 billion held across 1.31 million holders, with the holder count up 123.62% over the past 30 days. That expansion continues a trend the platform has tracked all year: distributed value in the category climbed from roughly $951 million in March to about $1.89 billion by July, according to RWA.xyz figures — tokenized equities going from a rounding error to a multibillion-dollar segment in a matter of months.
Moonshot AI Joins the Roster
Moonshot AI's inclusion signals Bybit is willing to extend pre-IPO perpetuals beyond companies with an announced listing path and into AI startups whose valuations are set almost entirely by private funding rounds and secondary-market chatter. That makes the contract more speculative than Unitree's, where traders at least have a regulatory approval and an exchange venue to anchor pricing.
Competition Heats Up in Pre-IPO Derivatives
Bybit isn't alone in chasing this niche. Rival exchanges have leaned on the same demand for private-company exposure — for instance, Binance's own pre-IPO perpetual on Anthropic has implied a valuation north of $1.8 trillion, underscoring how thinly traded private-market perpetuals can produce headline-grabbing prices with comparatively little volume behind them. As more exchanges compete for the same pool of pre-IPO names, traders will need to weigh how much of any given contract's price reflects genuine private-market demand versus the mechanics of a still-immature derivatives category.
