SpaceX reports third-quarter results after the US market close on Tuesday 20 October 2026, its second earnings report since its June listing, and the one line most Wall Street previews will skip is the bitcoin. At the time of its last filing the company held 18,712 BTC, according to CoinDesk’s report on the August results. Bitcoin closed on 30 June at $58,559 and on 30 September at $83,554, so if the holding has not changed, the coins gained roughly $468 million in value over the quarter. That figure is our own estimate, not a number SpaceX has reported.
Bitcoin itself is little changed this morning. It was trading near $81,560 on Coinbase at about 06:05 UTC on Tuesday, within the $80,700 to $83,100 band it has held since 9 October. The more interesting move is on the balance sheet of a company that most people do not think of as a crypto name.
What is on the calendar tonight
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) publishes after the close, with a live audio webcast at 3:30 p.m. Central Time (1:30 p.m. Pacific), according to Drive Tesla. Benzinga put the Benzinga Pro consensus at $12.74 billion of revenue and earnings of $0.14 per share, and reported the shares up 2.92% to $150.29 at 10:30 a.m. New York time on Monday. The same article quotes RBC analyst Ken Herbert, who kept an Outperform rating and a $225 price target and called the early report date a surprise, since most expected November.
Netflix also reports after the close, per TheStreet’s market wrap. Tesla, Meta, IBM and Texas Instruments follow on Wednesday. The reports land on the heels of a Nasdaq rebound: the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.1% on Monday to 26,430.89 and the S&P 500 added 0.4% to 7,690.73, Yahoo Finance reported.
What SpaceX said about its bitcoin last time
SpaceX reported second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion against a consensus of $6.9 billion and a net loss of $541 million, narrowed from $1.0 billion a year earlier, per CoinDesk. In the same filing the value of its 18,712 bitcoin fell to $1.10 billion at 30 June from $1.64 billion at the end of 2025, a decline of about $540 million, according to Crypto Briefing. The same report says the company sold no bitcoin during the quarter.
We checked those two valuations against market prices. Bitcoin’s UTC daily close was $87,509 on 31 December 2025 and $58,559 on 30 June 2026 (Yahoo Finance BTC-USD). Multiplying each by 18,712 coins gives $1.637 billion and $1.096 billion, which match the reported $1.64 billion and $1.10 billion once rounded. That tells us SpaceX’s figures track the quarter-end bitcoin price closely, so the same arithmetic can be used for the third quarter.
The third-quarter arithmetic
| Date | BTC close (UTC) | Value of 18,712 BTC | Change vs prior date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Dec 2025 | $87,509 | $1.637 billion | — |
| 31 Mar 2026 | $68,233 | $1.277 billion | −$360 million |
| 30 Jun 2026 | $58,559 | $1.096 billion | −$181 million |
| 30 Sep 2026 | $83,554 | $1.563 billion | +$468 million (+42.7%) |
| 20 Oct 2026, 06:05 UTC | $81,563 | $1.526 billion | −$37 million since 30 Sep |
Source: bitcoin prices are Yahoo Finance BTC-USD daily closes (UTC) for the dated rows and the Coinbase ticker for the last row; the holding is the 18,712 BTC SpaceX disclosed in its August filing. Values and changes are our calculation and assume the holding is unchanged.
Read down the table and the swing is large relative to the rest of the business. A $468 million gain is about 3.7% of the $12.74 billion revenue consensus, and it is similar in size to the $541 million net loss SpaceX posted in the second quarter. Whether such a gain would flow through to reported earnings depends on the accounting, which we cover in the next section.
How the accounting could turn a bitcoin move into an earnings number
Since the FASB’s Accounting Standards Update 2023-08, companies that hold in-scope crypto assets must measure them at fair value and report the changes in net income each period, as Deloitte’s summary of the standard explains. Before that rule, firms such as Tesla recorded impairments when bitcoin fell and could not book the recovery. The coverage we read does not spell out how SpaceX applies the rule, so we cannot confirm that a bitcoin gain will appear as a line in tonight’s income statement. If it does, a quarter in which bitcoin rose 42.7% would help the bottom line without any change in the rockets or satellites business.
There are three reasons our $468 million could be wrong. SpaceX could have bought or sold bitcoin since the last filing. It could use a different quarter-end price from the UTC close we used. And the gain may be reported inside a larger line such as other income, which makes it harder to spot. We will update this article, or publish a correction, when the filing is out.
The mainstream hook: why a rocket company matters to bitcoin readers
SpaceX is among the largest US-listed companies, so a holding of 18,712 bitcoin is small for it, about $1.5 billion at today’s price. For bitcoin the picture is different. Public companies with large balance-sheet positions turn bitcoin into a line item that analysts, index providers and regulators read every quarter. Two recent stories show how that attention cuts both ways. MSCI confirmed on 15 October that “non-operating companies” will be ineligible for its global indexes from the close of 30 November, a rule aimed at bitcoin treasury companies, which we covered in Field Guide #60. And the accounting rule above means a company’s earnings now rise and fall with the coin price.
SpaceX sits at the other end of that spectrum from a bitcoin-treasury company. Its bitcoin is a side asset, not the business. That is why the line is worth reading: it shows how a non-crypto company reports a volatile asset in public, and whether it is still holding. If tonight’s filing shows 18,712 coins again, that is another quarter in which the company kept its position through a 33% fall in the first half and a 42.7% rise in the third.
What to watch tonight
- Coin count: does the filing still show 18,712 BTC, or has the number changed? Any purchase or sale would be new information.
- Where the gain shows up: look for a bitcoin fair-value line in net income, other income or the notes, and compare it with our $468 million estimate.
- Revenue and earnings against consensus: $12.74 billion and $0.14 per share, per Benzinga Pro. A large bitcoin gain could lift the headline earnings figure without any operating improvement.
- Quarter-to-date: bitcoin is about 2.4% below its 30 September close, so the position is worth roughly $37 million less today than at quarter-end.
For the bitcoin market itself, the more immediate signals are elsewhere. Spot bitcoin ETFs took in $526.7 million on Monday, and the Federal Reserve decides on rates on 28 October. Tonight’s SpaceX report will not move either, but it is a reminder that bitcoin now shows up in the quarterly numbers of companies far outside crypto.
Method and limits
Method: bitcoin closes are Yahoo Finance BTC-USD daily closes (UTC) for 31 December 2025, 31 March, 30 June and 30 September 2026; the 20 October figure is the Coinbase ticker at 06:05 UTC. Value = closes × 18,712 BTC, the holding in SpaceX’s August filing as reported by CoinDesk and Crypto Briefing. We did not read the filing itself, and quarter-end valuation prices used by SpaceX may differ by a small amount from the UTC close. Market data for 19 October is from Yahoo Finance and TheStreet; analyst and consensus figures are from Benzinga. This article was written before SpaceX’s results were published.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are volatile and you can lose some or all of the money you put in. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold bitcoin, any fund or any company's shares. Do your own research and consider speaking to a licensed financial adviser.