Crypto traders are gaining exposure to China’s AI stock boom through a channel outside Beijing’s conventional market-access system. Rather than buying mainland-listed shares directly, offshore investors are using perpetual futures tied to Chinese chip companies.

These contracts allow users to bet on share values without holding the underlying stock, and they trade continuously on cryptocurrency exchanges. The structure has created a separate market for companies that are difficult for foreign capital to access through ordinary stock exchanges.

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

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

The interest in CXMT reflects a broader focus on Chinese semiconductor companies as investors look for exposure to hardware suppliers tied to AI infrastructure. Memory chips are a core component in data centers and advanced computing systems, which has made chip listings a closely watched part of China’s technology market.

Crypto platforms offer offshore traders a route around China’s stock access rules

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

Both channels have restrictions. Quotas limit the amount of capital that can move through approved routes, while Stock Connect covers only a limited group of companies.

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

They must also have a two-year trading record. Those requirements prevent many mainland buyers from directly participating in price discovery for the company.

Perpetual futures bypass those account rules because traders never receive the shares. The product originated in cryptocurrency markets as a way to take positions on assets such as Bitcoin without taking ownership.

Perpetual futures also have no expiration date. Users typically post stablecoins as collateral and then take long or short positions depending on where they expect the price to move. Because the contracts do not confer shareholder ownership, holders do not receive voting rights or direct claims on the listed equity.

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

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

On Wednesday, TradeXYZ added another Chinese chip contract. The new perpetual futures product offers 10-fold leverage and tracks GigaDevice Semiconductor (SSE: 603986). That means a 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 futures contract trades on expectations about what a company may be worth once its shares begin public trading. A buyer profits if the listed stock opens above the derivative price. After the debut, a market data feed is expected to move the contract closer to the live share price.

Iggy Ioppe, chief investment officer at Theo, said the perpetual futures contract should track the underlying stock. Theo uses tokenized real-world assets. Because the contract never expires, traders can keep using it after the listing instead of closing the position on a fixed date.

The CXMT contract on Hyperliquid was trading near $6.35 per share on Thursday. It had earlier climbed to $8.60 before falling back. On Thursday, the implied corporate value 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 offering price of 8.66 yuan, or about $1.28 per share. That gives the chipmaker an initial valuation of roughly 579 billion yuan. Even so, the offering would still be the largest IPO on the STAR Market.

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

Because overseas investors cannot directly participate in the listing, offshore demand helped push CXMT’s contract far above the Shanghai offer price. The result is a second price formed on cryptocurrency rails before the official shares begin trading. Once CXMT begins trading in Shanghai, the key issue for these contracts will be how closely exchange data feeds and contract rules keep the offshore derivative aligned with the live stock price.