Hyperliquid ecosystem’s Entropy has secured the highest open interest in the Anthropic pre-IPO market.
Written by: Cooper Duschang
Compiled by: Choper, Foresight News
Anthropic is one of the most anticipated IPO candidates in 2026, with market trading expectations that its valuation will exceed US$2.1 trillion. In the past, ordinary investors found it difficult to access the performance and valuation of companies that were not yet listed; only qualified investors and institutional capital had the opportunity to participate. Most investors could only wait until the company went public to trade its shares.
Perpetual futures do not require settlement of the underlying assets, so exchanges do not need to hold Anthropic stock to build the corresponding trading market. This has led multiple exchanges to launch Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contracts, allowing traders to bet on Anthropic’s valuation. At present, 12 exchanges offer Anthropic pre-IPO contract markets, and 6 of the platforms have open interest exceeding US$1 million. This article will focus on the top five exchanges by open interest ranking.
Although 12 platforms have launched Anthropic pre-IPO trading markets, traders have recently continued to flow into just one: Entropy. Entropy is Hyperliquid's HIP-3 ecosystem exchange, and it launched Anthropic perpetual contracts on August 19. Since launch, trading volume in Entropy's Anthropic market has been in the top 15% of the Hyperliquid platform, indicating strong market interest in the Anthropic IPO.
This article breaks down how Entropy's pre-IPO perpetual contract market for Anthropic competes with other HIP-3 builders in terms of market deployment, how it improves simulated aggregated order book depth, and how it competes with exchanges that use low or zero funding fee models.
Entropy rises as an HIP-3 ecosystem
Hyperliquid's HIP-3 builder mechanism rules are: stake 500,000 HYPE (about $40 million) to freely launch three perpetual contract markets. If you need to add more trading markets, you must participate in a Dutch auction, with the starting floor bid of 500 HYPE (about $40,000). Among the three markets Entropy launched in its first batch, one includes Anthropic's pre-IPO perpetual contract.
Five exchanges that launched pre-IPO perpetual contracts for Anthropic. Data source: Talos CM Market Data Pro
Other HIP-3 builders have also already launched pre-IPO markets for price discovery before companies make their official public listing. These exchanges rely on internal order books to price pre-IPO assets. Beyond using order-book-derived prices, Entropy also introduces external market data sources as valuation references. With multiple price inputs, Entropy is expected to achieve higher pricing accuracy than its competitors, helping it capture a larger share of the market among HIP-3 builders.
Compared with centralized exchanges, Entropy has a price spread in perpetual contracts before the Anthropic IPO. Data source: Talos CM Market Data Pro
Different exchanges have price spreads, creating opportunities for cross-platform arbitrage. These kinds of pre-IPO listings markets are inherently highly speculative and lack publicly available valuation benchmarks, but traders can profit by exploiting price differences between platforms. Currently, there is a 2.47% price spread between centralized exchanges and Entropy.
The time-game among HIP-3 builders
The pre-IPO market newly launched on Hyperliquid has a first-mover advantage: it can capture early market hype, earn trading fees, and recoup market deployment costs. But if the launch is too early—when attention is insufficient—problems such as weak trading volume, higher slippage, and rising funding rates can occur.
Timeline of the HIP-3 markets for Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contracts. Data source: Talos CM Market Data Pro
Like centralized exchanges such as Entropy, Binance, Bitget, Gate.io, etc., Entropy prices its pre-IPO contracts for Anthropic using a method that implies a company's total equity valuation. For now, this pricing approach keeps HIP-3 projects like Trade.xyz out of the gate—Trade.xyz values non-listed companies based on the expected per-share price. Until Trade.xyz can submit, after Anthropic files its public S1 prospectus and discloses more details about the shares being sold, it cannot enter. OKX faces a similar issue: its pre-IPO market pricing assumes a total share issuance of 10 billion shares and values by per-share price.
Changes in trading volume of Anthropic perpetual contracts across five exchanges. Data source: Talos CM Market Data Pro
At present, there are no other HIP-3 builders live with Anthropic perpetual contracts, avoiding liquidity fragmentation. Although Entropy launched more than two and a half months later than Binance and Bitget, in its Anthropic perpetual market, the average daily trading volume ranks second in the past two weeks ($10.22 million), while open interest ranks first ($30.63 million).
Entropy order book depth and slippage
Traders route orders to the markets with the smallest spread, the best order book depth, or the lowest funding rates—so as to improve liquidity and reduce trading costs. Simulation results from merged order book modeling show that Entropy has sufficient liquidity near the mid price.
Merged order book of the pre-IPO perpetual contracts for Anthropic. Data source: Talos CM Market Data Pro
Comparing the merged average order book depth within 72 hours, in the middle-price band of ±0.5%, Entropy's liquidity is about 17% of the combined total of Binance, Gate.io, and Bitget. The order book displayed by Hyperliquid is sufficiently liquid within the middle price ±1% range, with a thick bid-ask spread that can reduce price impact when traders buy and sell pre-IPO contracts.
Bid-ask spread of the pre-IPO perpetual contracts for Anthropic. Data source: Talos CM Market Data Pro
Over the past two weeks, Entropy's average bid-ask spread has been only 1.5 basis points—on par with major centralized exchanges—and it is the smallest spread among all the platforms.
Funding rates determine traders' platform choice
Perpetual contracts rely on funding rates to ensure the perpetual contract price does not deviate significantly from the spot price. But since the company hasn't been listed yet, there is no spot price—how does an exchange collect the funding rate? The pre-IPO market launched by HIP-3 builders can compute funding rates even without a spot benchmark. Entropy's funding rate is calculated based on the imbalance between the perpetual contract price and the oracle price. The oracle price is generated by combining external/private market data sources with the endogenous price from within the order book.
Funding rates of the pre-IPO perpetual contracts for Anthropic. Data source: Talos CM Market Data Pro
Hyperliquid uses hourly dynamic resets for funding rates; Binance sets it at 0.005% every 8 hours; Bitget and Gate.io charge little to no funding fees. Recent discussions around AI-industry-related risks have driven Entropy's funding rate to spike. Since the funding rate mechanism means positions must bear costs, traders are encouraged to rationally price the valuation of Anthropic upon listing. But when valuation expectations fluctuate sharply, long-term holding costs rise, causing traders to switch to exchanges with lower funding rates.
Summary
Anthropic's pre-IPO trading market is the latest case of perpetual contracts being applied to everything, as traders begin to speculate on valuations of non-listed companies. Entropy's rapid rise and its capture of the highest open interest show that traders are more willing to use Hyperliquid's infrastructure to trade pre-IPO perpetual contracts, rather than limiting themselves to centralized exchanges only.
As more public IPO prospectus documents for Anthropic are disclosed, more HIP-3 builders are expected to enter the arena and compete for trading volume related to the Anthropic IPO. Additional market launches will challenge Entropy's existing market share and also lead to fragmentation of market liquidity.