Vibrant cities always attract ambitious people, and Shenzhen is just such a city.

More than forty years ago, Shenzhen was still a rice field and a few fishing villages on the east bank of the Pearl River Delta. But over the next forty years, it turned Huaqiangbei into the world’s largest electronic component distribution center, Dafen Village into a global oil painting factory, and became the birthplace of Huawei, Tencent, DJI, and BYD. In this city, there are too many people who profit from information, liquidity, and regulatory asymmetries by exploiting price differences.

Arez is a typical Shenzhen native like that.

He’s in his early thirties, and he and his friends run a “meme farming” studio in an office building in Nanshan. He once made a lot of money for his team from the Arbitrum, Starknet, and LayerZero airdrops in 2023. At the peak, he maintained over a thousand on-chain addresses, running scripts, IP proxies, KYC resources, and capital rotations.

A year ago, when BlockBeats interviewed Arez in the article “Anti-Meme Farming Intensifies, Clever Meme Farmers Still Earn Over Ten Thousand a Month?”, his meme farming studio had a dedicated team for Hong Kong stock IPOs, but the main focus was still on crypto meme farming.

But starting from the second half of this year, Arez’s meme farming studio decided to fully shift to Hong Kong stock IPOs.

Hong Kong IPOs: From “Small Spring” to “Bull Market”

To understand why Arez’s meme farming studio changed direction, we first need to talk about how attractive “Hong Kong IPOs” are right now.

Since the start of 2026, over 80% of newly listed stocks in the Hong Kong market have gained price on their first trading day, with an average first-day increase of over 38%.

By the end of Q1, Hong Kong had completed 40 new stock listings in a single quarter, raising a total of HKD 109.9 billion, surpassing Nasdaq (21 listings), NYSE (15 listings), and other major global exchanges, topping the global IPO fundraising chart for the quarter.

Image source: Snowball

Almost all the leading stocks are in hard tech. On January 2, the first day of the year, Biren Technology became the first domestic GPU company listed in Hong Kong, with an IPO price of HKD 19.6, oversubscribed 2,346.5 times, and a first-day increase of 75.82%. On January 9, MiniMax listed and surged 109.1% on its first day, with a market cap surpassing HKD 8B. On February 13, Haizhi Technology Group soared 242.20% on its first day.

What impressed Arez most were the three most insane days in April. Since April, newly listed stocks have been even more exaggerated, with all rising and none breaking below the offering price.

On April 16, Sig Energy officially listed. It’s a distributed energy storage project developed by a Huawei-affiliated startup, with revenue growing from HKD 58 million to HKD 9 billion in two years. Its first-day stock price doubled, and winning a lot of shares could earn over HKD 34k. The entry fee was HKD 32.7k, and it doubled within a day. The entire Shenzhen IPO scene was buzzing that night. On April 17, two more companies, GroupCore and Changguang Chenxin, listed simultaneously. GroupCore was the first IPO among the “Hangzhou Six Little Dragons,” rising 144% on the first day, with a nearly fourfold increase over two trading days. Changguang Chenxin also listed on the same day, opening 75% higher, and a few days later, its highest price was over 145% above the issue price.

Three days, three new stocks, each making winners ecstatic.

According to LiveReport big data, since 2026, if each Hong Kong IPO’s allotment of one lot was sold at the opening price, the paper gains from Hong Kong IPOs in 2026 have already exceeded HKD 128k.

This is no longer a “small spring” but a “big bull market” for Hong Kong IPOs.

Shenzhen meme farmers are now focusing entirely on Hong Kong IPOs

Arez revealed that not only his meme farming studio, but also several other Shenzhen meme offices he knows, either already had Hong Kong IPO business or started shifting most of their focus to Hong Kong IPOs from the second half of 2025.

“We mainly have two strategies,” Arez told BlockBeats. “One is to build account matrices to apply for IPOs and earn the allotment profits, and the other is a method we’ve been practicing and learning this year—partnering with mainland channels and Hong Kong tour groups to bring new clients to banks and brokerages, earning CPA rebates per person.”

Million-dollar profits in April

Let’s review Arez’s operations during the most insane week in mid-April 2026.

When applying for IPOs, Arez mainly analyzes new stocks based on several factors: good fundamentals, high market interest, large-cap stocks, low issuance valuation, and high subscription multiples.

“Taking recent examples, Sig Energy hits every mark perfectly.” Its energy storage sector is fundamental; the Huawei-affiliated team adds market interest and narrative; HKD 4.4 billion in fundraising makes it a large-cap stock.

“And most importantly, Sig Energy’s entry fee is high—HKD 324.2 per share, with 100 shares per lot, requiring HKD 32.7k to subscribe. A high entry fee means fewer retail investors participate, increasing the chance of winning the allotment,” Arez explained.

On April 8, Sig Energy started its IPO. That morning, Arez and his partners held a meeting, all highly confident in this stock, deciding to subscribe at the maximum amount for each account, all leveraging financing.

In the following days, Arez’s team worked intensively, “but when the allotment results came out, our luck was quite good.”

On April 15, between 4:15 and 6:30 pm, the dark pool opened, and Sig Energy surged over 81%, with a paper profit of HKD 26k for one lot. Arez sold most of his holdings during the dark pool, locking in the first wave of gains. The next day, it opened at HKD 581, and the remaining shares were sold within half an hour of the open. Then on April 17, GroupCore and Changguang Chenxin “struck twice.”

Arez’s studio made nearly HKD 34k in less than two weeks.

Compared to the 2023 Arbitrum wave, the profit share for the studio was in the same range, but the ARB project took 14 months from initial interaction to token issuance.

A typical meme project takes about 12-18 months from start to token launch, with funds frozen, ETH potentially halved, and project delays possible.

But the Hong Kong IPO market signals the complete opposite: short cycles, quick feedback, high certainty. The entire process from IPO application to listing takes only 7 to 10 days.

Turning account opening into a steady cash flow

Open V2EX, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, Xianyu, Telegram, and search “Changqiao cashback,” “Futu invite code,” “Tiger channel rebate,” and you’ll find a more mature CPA distribution market than Taobao affiliates.

“Usually, brokerages give channels a minimum rebate of HKD 500. Our rebates on the internet are typically split: HKD 250 to the client, and the rest is our intermediary profit,” Arez said. “For me, IPOs are like a main business, and earning rebates is a passive side gig.”

Arez also revealed to BlockBeats that a stable intermediary with good channels can earn between HKD 1,500 and HKD 3,000 per client.

Data shows that in Q1 2024, HSBC Hong Kong added 130k new private banking clients; by Q1 2025, that number surged to 300k. This wave of account openings has spawned a huge ecosystem of agents. For example, the service fee for opening a Hong Kong account in Hong Kong is HKD 1,200, while in mainland China it’s HKD 2,500.

Arez’s studio also set up a “Hong Kong card + broker account opening” team at the beginning of 2026, charging a modest fee of HKD 2,000–3,500 per client for