Hyperliquid pre-market futures contracts are priced at $7.2 for 长鑫科技, with foreign capital entering China’s storage narrative via DeFi

Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Quick Read: Changxin Technology’s STAR Market (科创板) IPO is priced at 8.66 yuan per share, raising 57.9 billion yuan, with subscriptions on July 16. On the night before the subscription, Trade.xyz deployed a CXMT perpetual contract on Hyperliquid. The current trading price is 7.2 USDC (about 52 yuan RMB per share). 24-hour trading volume is $1.32 million, open interest is $2.41 million, implied market cap is about 3.5 trillion yuan, landing at the upper end of institutional expectations of 2–3 trillion. This is the first time an on-chain pre-market contract has directly targeted an A-share STAR Market IPO—and also the most direct entry point for overseas investors into the “China storage substitution” narrative.

Changxin Technology hasn’t even rung the bell at the SSE yet, but price discovery in the crypto market has already begun.

According to a report by Bloomberg on July 15, Trade.xyz deployed a Changxin Technology (CXMT) perpetual contract on the Hyperliquid blockchain, with the contract code xyz:CXMTUSD. As of the time of publication, the contract’s 24-hour trading value is about $1.32 million, open interest about $2.41 million, and the funding rate is 0.0014%. The price rose from an initial mark price of about $6 to $7.2, with a 24-hour gain of 20%.

This isn’t the first time Hyperliquid has done pre-IPO positioning. In May this year, ahead of AI chip company Cerebras’s IPO, the gap between Hyperliquid’s pre-market contract and the Nasdaq open was only 1.3%. In June, on SpaceX’s IPO day, the on-chain contract’s single-day trading volume was $1.38 billion. But targeting an A-share STAR Market name is a first.

$7.2, about 52 yuan RMB per share, implied market cap about 3.5 trillion

The contract is denominated in USDC and tracks the per-share price, using the same logic as the pre-market contracts for SpaceX and Cerebras.

Converted at the current exchange rate, $7.2 is about 52 yuan RMB per share. Multiply by the total number of shares after issuance of 66.88 billion shares, and the implied total market capitalization is about 3.5 trillion yuan—about 6 times the IPO issuance market value of 579.2 billion yuan.

This pricing lands in a slightly optimistic range expected by sell-side institutions. 21st Century Business Herald cited investment bank insiders saying that after Changxin Technology lists, its valuation is expected to be 2 trillion to 2.5 trillion yuan. Caijing magazine, compiling estimates from multiple institutions, gave an optimistic scenario of above 3 trillion to 4 trillion yuan. Hyperliquid’s 3.5-trillion yuan pre-market pricing sits between the neutral upper bound and the optimistic lower bound.

Put it another way: if these on-chain traders’ judgments are correct, Changxin Technology’s share price on the first day could open around 50 yuan RMB—about 6 times the 8.66 yuan issue price. In the first half of this year, new STAR Market listings in A-shares saw an average first-day increase of 489%, so a 6x open is not unusual.

Less than 24 hours after the contract launched, the $1.32 million trading volume and $2.41 million open interest have formed initial liquidity in the on-chain market, but compared with SpaceX’s $1.38 billion single-day trading on its listing day, there is still an order-of-magnitude difference. This price reflects the directional judgment of early participants, not institutional-level pricing.

A-shares can’t be sold the same day you buy, and can’t be shorted: perpetual contracts naturally fill the gap

Why are crypto traders paying attention to an A-share company in China? The viewpoints of some investors on overseas social media may help explain it. The structural restrictions of A-shares are precisely the opportunity for perpetual contracts.

There are two structural limitations in A-shares. T+1 settlement means you can’t sell on the day you buy, and STAR Market individual stocks can’t be sold short via margin financing. For a stock like Changxin Technology, where huge volatility may appear on the first trading day, A-share holders face an awkward situation: you lock in floating gains from hitting the daily limit, but you can’t lock in profits that day; the risk of a gap-up followed by a drop the next day is fully exposed.

Perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid don’t have these restrictions. 24/7 trading, both long and short directions, and leverage is adjustable. In theory, investors holding a Changxin Technology A-share position could open short positions on Hyperliquid to hedge overnight risk.

However, the absence of an arbitrage route is a problem that needs to be addressed. When Cerebras and SpaceX listed on Nasdaq, global investors could freely arbitrage between the underlying shares and the contracts, causing prices to converge quickly. After Changxin Technology lists on the SSE STAR Market, with a 500k yuan asset threshold and QFII quota limitations, most overseas retail investors can’t buy the underlying shares directly.

A price gap may exist between the contract price and the actual A-share trading price for a long time, requiring investors to price for it additionally.

Foreign investors can’t buy A-shares; DeFi becomes the entry point for the “China storage substitution” concept

Blockchain.News directly points out in its report that the CXMT contract provides an access channel for overseas traders to bypass the 500k yuan threshold of the STAR Market.

This demand isn’t manufactured out of thin air. Changxin Technology is the world’s fourth-largest DRAM supplier. In Q1, its global market share was 7.7%. SemiAnalysis expects that by the end of the year it may surpass Micron to become the world’s third-largest. Apple has begun testing Changxin Technology’s DRAM chips for devices sold in the Chinese market (reported by the UK’s Financial Times on July 8). For the first half of 2026, parent-company net profit is expected to be 50 billion to 57 billion yuan, with a profit margin of about 70%—in the same ballpark as SK hynix’s 73% and Samsung’s 81%.

When a company like this lists, storage-industry investors worldwide are watching—but most of them can’t buy it. The crypto research firm Citrini has repeatedly recommended Hyperliquid perpetual contract scenarios in paid research reports, while also being bullish on Changxin Technology.

With foreign capital unable to participate in A-shares directly, Hyperliquid contracts could become the most convenient channel for them to enter the “China storage substitution” narrative.

In a bigger picture, this is the first time DeFi infrastructure has been used to create a parallel pricing market targeting STAR Market names in China. Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework allows any entity to deploy perpetual contracts by collateralizing 500k HYPE tokens (about $28 million). Trade.xyz has already rolled out pre-market contracts for companies including SpaceX, Cerebras, OpenAI, and Anthropic, accumulating more than $35k in trading volume. After TradingView connected the Hyperliquid and Trade.xyz data sources on July 2, the price trend of on-chain perpetual contracts has moved into mainstream charting terminals.

Worth mentioning: Hyperliquid’s policy center and TradeXYZ recently met with the SEC’s Crypto Special Working Group to discuss crypto-asset regulation. Based on the current regulatory trajectory, U.S. regulation remains the main compliance focus for the platform, and the China regulatory risks brought by A-share names are not yet in its considerations.

(Note: Hyperliquid is not open to users in China.)

Raising 57.9 billion yuan, net profit of 66 billion yuan in the first half: Changxin Technology itself is an annual event

Returning to the A-share context, even without the Hyperliquid contracts, Changxin Technology’s IPO alone has already become a landmark event for China’s 2026 capital markets.

With an issue price of 8.66 yuan per share and an initial issuance of 30k shares, it is expected to raise 57.9 billion yuan—close to double the original plan of 29.5 billion yuan. If the over-allotment option is fully exercised, the raised amount would reach 66.6 billion yuan, becoming the largest IPO in Asia within the year and the largest semiconductor IPO by size in A-share history. The price-to-earnings ratio at issuance is 308.92x, far above the industry average of 76.32x, but the market isn’t worried because Q1 net profit of 33 billion yuan is rapidly absorbing the valuation. The company expects 110 billion to 120 billion yuan in revenue in the first half of 2026, and 50 billion to 57 billion yuan in parent-company net profit, up more than 2,244%.

More importantly, it’s timing. The global DRAM market is in a rare super boom cycle. Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron are shifting large portions of capacity to HBM high-bandwidth memory needed for AI servers, leading to a shortage of consumer-grade DRAM supply. In Q1, DRAM contract prices rose 90% to 95% quarter over quarter, the largest single-quarter jump in history. Changxin Technology focuses on consumer-grade DDR5 and LPDDR5X products, with monthly production capacity of 200,000 to 300k chips—one of the few companies globally expanding consumer-grade DRAM against the trend, capturing the capacity gap strategically vacated by the three giants.

In the A-share IPO subscription segment, in the first half of this year, all 71 new stocks’ first trading day performances were positive. The average first-day gain for STAR Market IPOs was 489%. Retail investors can participate in online subscription on July 16 with subscription code 787825, and listing is expected on July 27.

For A-share investors, July 16 subscription is the main door. For overseas investors, the CXMT contract on Hyperliquid has already opened a side door. After the contract officially lists on July 27, whether its contract price can quickly converge to actual trading prices like Cerebras did will be the key test of whether this model can be replicated on A-shares. But even if the price doesn’t converge, the mere existence of this parallel market already shows that global capital’s interest in the “China storage substitution” narrative isn’t just talk.