Astronaut costumes, teenage crypto millionaires, and a $300 million bet: Scenes from the SpaceX IPO

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 Space X 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 teenaged “retired crypto traders” with hired camera men 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, the 19-year-old who called himself the “Clavicular of Crypto,” referring to the notorious looksmaxxing streamer. He said he was “retired” in 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.” Howard said he’d sit this one out—crypto IPOs burned him—but his friends had thrown in six figures apiece, on day one. One friend had thrown in a million, he said. Eva Roytburg for Fortune The biggest IPO in history SpaceX is pricing $75 billion in stock into a market that is als