Back in 2012, investors were scrambling to invest in Facebook before it went public.

Facebook was the hottest tech company on the planet, and the fear of missing out was massive.

The problem was that everyday investors couldn’t buy shares.

Facebook was still private, and access was limited to insiders and wealthy investors.

So people found a workaround.

They bought a fund called GSV Capital instead.

GSV owned about 225,000 Facebook shares at roughly $29 each, making it one of the only ways for regular investors to get early exposure.

But investors didn’t just buy the fund.

They overpaid for it.

At one point, GSV was trading at a 70% premium to the value of its Facebook shares.

In simple terms, if the Facebook stock inside the fund was worth $29, investors were paying $49 just to get access.

Why?

Because they believed the IPO would be so big, it wouldn’t matter.

Then Facebook went public.

The stock didn’t surge. It struggled.

The stock opened for trading around $38 and went nowhere.

Within a year, Facebook was actually down about $10 from its IPO price.

And GSV?

It got crushed.

The 70% premium disappeared overnight once investors could buy Facebook directly.

Why pay a huge markup through a fund when you can just own the real thing, right?

Then, as the value of the underlying Facebook shares dropped, GSV fell even more.

Investors who thought they were getting in early ended up losing the most.

Now we’re seeing a very similar setup forming again.

This time with SpaceX.

The fund is called the Fundrise Innovation Fund (VCX).

I first wrote about VCX a few days ago when I warned: “Beware the New SpaceX Fund.”

At the time, VCX was trading around $285 – 15 times the fund’s net asset value.

(That’s the value of its underlying holdings in companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, Anduril, OpenAI, etc.)

After spiking above $500 – 30 times the value of the fund’s underlying assets – the fund now trades at $115.

It’s been a wild ride.

At $115, however, the fund still trades well above its $19 net asset value.

Which begs the question: What will happen to shares of VCX when SpaceX goes public?

If history is any guide, the answer is simple.

This thing will drop like a rock.

Right now, investors are paying up for access.

VCX is one of the only ways to get exposure to SpaceX before the IPO, so the fund trades far above the value of what it actually owns.

But the moment SpaceX goes public, that advantage is gone.

There’s no reason to pay $115 for an overpriced fund when you can buy SpaceX directly.

That’s when the math takes over.

The gap between price and value will close.

And it likely won’t close slowly.

It’ll snap.

And if SpaceX doesn’t immediately soar after its IPO, VCX investors could get hit twice – just like GSV investors did in 2012.

First, the premium disappears.

Then the underlying assets get repriced.

That’s the risk most people aren’t thinking about.

They’re focused on getting in early.

But in reality, they’re overpaying for an asset that every investor will soon have access to.

Unfortunately, once SpaceX goes public…

That access will be worth zero.