Crypto traders value Reliance Jio at about $110 billion as India's biggest IPO takes subscriptions

Bitget traders put Jio's value near $110 billion

Crypto traders are valuing Jio Platforms at about $110 billion through a futures contract on the crypto exchange Bitget, while the Indian telecom and digital company's public share sale is open for subscription. Jio Platforms is the telecom and digital business of Reliance Industries, one of India's biggest conglomerates, and its network is the country's largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers.

The JIOUSDT perpetual contract traded near $12 on Thursday, Oct 22. In the share sale itself, Jio set a maximum bid price of 1,119 rupees ($11.79) per share. A perpetual contract is a crypto trading product that tracks a price with no expiry date.

The numbers behind the Jio sale

• About 9.21 billion shares are expected to be outstanding after the sale.


• At the top of the price band, that share count implies a valuation of about 10.3 trillion rupees, or roughly $106 billion.


• The contract price is about 3.8% higher than that level, described in the report as a premium of roughly 4%.


• The sale aims to raise about 302 billion rupees.


• Trading volume in the contract since launch totals about 369,000 JIO, or roughly $4.4 million.


• Since it launched on Oct. 14, the contract has traded between $11.48 and $12.24.

What the Jio contract actually gives traders

The contract is a bet on Jio's price, not a way to own the company. Holders receive no shares, no voting rights and no dividends, only exposure to price moves. Traders put up USDT, a stablecoin designed to stay close to one US dollar, as collateral to take a leveraged position.

According to CoinDesk, Bitget says the contract is based on publicly available information, such as announced IPO pricing ranges or the final offering terms.

Earlier pre-IPO crypto markets were not always accurate

This is not the first time a coming share sale has found a market on crypto platforms. Perpetual contracts on SpaceX and Cerebras traded on TradeXYZ, a platform on the Hyperliquid network, before those companies' stock market debuts.

Those markets can miss. Synthetic perpetual futures on SpaceX traded around $162 to $165 on Hyperliquid and Binance, implying a $2.2 trillion valuation. The company's official IPO valuation was almost 20% lower, at $1.8 trillion.

What is confirmed

• The Jio offering is the largest initial public offering in India's history, ahead of Hyundai Motor India's 279 billion-rupee sale in 2024.


• The price band, the expected share count and the size of the sale come from the company's offering documents, and the public subscription runs for three days.


• The roughly $110 billion figure is a price set by traders on Bitget. It was not announced by Jio or Reliance Industries.

What is still unclear

How closely the contract's price will match Jio's first trade once the shares list is not known. The report also notes the contract could swing sharply if the IPO is delayed, repriced or canceled.

Why the Jio contract matters

The contract gives a live valuation for a stock that has not yet listed, showing that price discovery for large IPOs can begin on crypto platforms before the first share changes hands. It also shows that these prices are market estimates, not guarantees of what the stock will be worth.

Sources

• CoinDesk