Offshore crypto traders are gaining exposure to China’s AI-related stock boom through a channel Beijing did not create for foreign investors. Rather than purchasing mainland-listed shares, traders are using perpetual futures linked to Chinese chip companies.

These contracts allow users to take positions on share values without owning the underlying stock, and they trade around the clock on cryptocurrency exchanges. The structure has created a separate market for companies that are otherwise difficult for foreign capital to access through conventional exchanges.

The main focus is CXMT, a Chinese memory-chip maker scheduled to begin trading in Shanghai on Monday. TradeXYZ and Gate.com listed perpetual contracts tied to the company before its public market debut.

CoinGlass recorded about $19 million in CXMT perpetual futures volume over 24 hours. The chipmaker is seeking to raise nearly $10 billion, a transaction that would make it mainland China’s largest IPO since 2010.

The attention reflects the broader strategic importance of semiconductors in China’s technology sector. Memory chips are used in servers and other computing systems, making companies such as CXMT part of the wider supply chain behind artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Crypto platforms provide offshore traders a path around China’s stock access rules

Beijing maintains a controlled system for foreign participation in Shanghai and Shenzhen equities. Foreign investors typically gain access through the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor framework or through Hong Kong’s Stock Connect program.

Both channels have constraints. Authorized routes are subject to limits on the amount of capital that can pass through them, while Stock Connect covers only a limited set of companies.

CXMT is set to list on Shanghai’s STAR Market, which also imposes strict eligibility standards for domestic participants. Retail traders must hold at least 500,000 yuan, or about $74,000, in qualifying assets.

They are also required to have a two-year trading history. Those requirements prevent many mainland buyers from participating directly in the company’s pricing.

Perpetual futures bypass those account requirements because the trader never receives the shares. The product originated in cryptocurrency markets as a way to bet on assets such as Bitcoin without taking ownership.

Unlike standard futures, perpetual futures do not expire. Users typically post stablecoins as collateral and then take either a long or short position based on where they expect the price to move. The contracts do not give holders shareholder rights, dividends or an allocation in the IPO; they only provide synthetic price exposure.

The product has expanded beyond tokens. Cryptocurrency exchanges now list contracts linked to stocks, commodities and private companies. Traders have already used similar instruments to gain early exposure to SpaceX and OpenAI before any public offerings.

SpaceX contracts have also been used by Chinese users to get around rules intended to prevent capital from leaving the country.

On Wednesday, TradeXYZ added another Chinese chip contract. The new perpetual future offers ten-fold leverage and tracks GigaDevice Semiconductor (SSE: 603986). That means a relatively small deposit can control a much larger position, while losses can increase at the same pace as gains.

CXMT’s crypto-linked price trades far above its planned Shanghai valuation

A pre-IPO perpetual future trades on assumptions about what a company may be worth once its shares start trading publicly. A buyer profits if the listed stock opens above the derivative price. After the debut, a market data feed is expected to bring the contract closer to the live share price.

Iggy Ioppe, chief investment officer at Theo, said the perpetual future should match the underlying stock. Theo uses tokenized real-world assets. Because the contract has no expiration date, traders can continue holding it after the listing instead of closing the position on a fixed settlement date.

The CXMT contract on Hyperliquid traded near $6.35 per share on Thursday. It had previously reached $8.60 before falling back. At Thursday’s level, the implied company valuation was close to $425 billion, or about 2.9 trillion yuan.

That valuation would put CXMT above Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (SSE: 601398; HKEX: 1398). ICBC, the largest mainland-listed company, is valued at about 2.56 trillion yuan.

The official IPO figures are much lower. CXMT announced an initial sale price of 8.66 yuan, or about $1.28 per share. That would give the chipmaker an initial valuation of roughly 579 billion yuan. Even at that level, the offering would still be the largest IPO on the STAR Market.

Hyperliquid allows users to trade futures linked to commodities, equities and cryptocurrencies without buying the underlying assets.

Because overseas investors cannot directly participate in the listing, offshore demand has helped push the CXMT contract far above the Shanghai offer price. The result is a second price forming on cryptocurrency rails before the official shares are transferred, highlighting how synthetic markets can create price discovery outside the exchange and regulatory channels where the actual stock will trade.