China’s largest IPO in over a decade becomes the first major Asian test for crypto pre-IPO futures

ChangXin Memory Technologies just pulled off China’s biggest IPO since 2010, raising 57.92 billion yuan, roughly $8.6 billion, on Shanghai’s STAR Market. But the real plot twist happened two weeks earlier, when a crypto platform nobody’s grandmother has heard of started letting traders bet on the outcome using perpetual futures settled in USDC on the Hyperliquid blockchain. The IPO that broke records CXMT listed on July 27 at a price of 8.66 yuan ($1.28) per share, representing roughly 10% of the company’s enlarged capital. The offering valued the chipmaker at approximately $85.5 billion before trading began, making it the largest A-share IPO since the Agricultural Bank of China went public more than fifteen years ago. Then the market opened, and things got enthusiastic. Shares surged as much as 466% intraday on debut. The $8.6 billion raise also makes CXMT’s listing the largest semiconductor IPO in Chinese history, surpassing SMIC’s $7.5 billion offering back in 2020. CXMT is currently China’s largest DRAM manufacturer by capacity and ranks fourth globally, putting it in direct competition with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Crypto’s pre-IPO futures experiment On July 14, nearly t...