To be honest, this SpaceX unlock puts more pressure than I initially thought.

On August 6, 911.5 million shares suddenly became unlocked; the market cap went straight to $116 billion, about one and a half times (and then more) of the currently circulating shares.
For a company that’s only been listed for two months, that’s already pretty scary.
Worse still, two days before the unlock it had to release its first quarterly earnings report—so it’s basically facing two tests hitting at once.
Early investors and employees got in at incredibly low costs. Back then, some people practically got the stock for free—now they’re talking dozens or even hundreds of times returns. Who wouldn’t be tempted to sell?
An engineer who joined in 2015 initially had equity worth only $10k; based on the issue price, it’s now close to $90 million. With that kind of temptation, who could resist?
The stock price had already been pricing this in. Since mid-June’s peak, it’s been down about 45% all the way, falling below the issue price, and the market cap has evaporated by over $1 trillion.
The bears are also cheering along—shorting exposure is approaching one-third.
Musk warned the shorts online and even promised to lock his own shares until 2027, but the market doesn’t seem to be buying it.
What’s even more unsettling is that Starship has had more problems recently.
On July 16, Flight 13’s test launch: after the engines ignited, several didn’t start normally, and in the last second they aborted the launch directly.
Although it successfully flew again on July 24, the shadow of “it almost went wrong” still lingers.
Starship is SpaceX’s biggest hope for the future—bigger Starlink, landing on the Moon, going to Mars—all rely on it.
When the tech keeps running into these small hiccups, investors can’t help but wonder: even if the dream is cool, if the rockets aren’t stable, will the unlock hit even harder?
But it also can’t all be seen as bearish.
The Starlink business has already started making money, and everyone also looks favorably on the space-economy cake.
Musk has said that unlocks will be in batches, not dumped all at once.
For someone like him, failure is basically part of everyday life—fix it, then fly again.
For someone like me, an ordinary investor, the best move may be to wait and see for now.
If the unlock day gets dumped particularly hard, it might actually be an opportunity. If it can’t be dumped down, it would suggest the market still believes in the space dream.
In any case, dreams and reality have always been fighting each other—this unlock storm is just adding a bit more “rocket-failure gunpowder” to the mix.